An Ache I Still Remember
by a tattered rose
Summary: "He knew where everything was, he just couldn't bring himself to touch them. They weren't his." Derek and Ivy have some letting go to do, before they can move on. ETA: Nothing says they can't move on together. ETA2: Eventually.
1. I think of when we were together

He knew where everything was, he just couldn't bring himself to touch them. They weren't his.

It would be too domestic to say that she had her own space, but a couple of dresses hung, bright and patterned, next to the line of desaturated grays and blacks and the occasional dark brown or streak of white. He folded them over to fit in the bag, knowing that she'd hate the wrinkles and creases. They'd come in wrapped around her and that was how they were supposed to have left. Not flat, empty and lifeless.

A few pairs of panties and a bra, silk nightie and even more interesting frills had co-opted part of his sock drawer. He hadn't exactly offered and she hadn't exactly asked, but the first time she'd come over straight from the studio with lingerie in her bag he'd tossed her cast-offs in his hamper for his laundry service to sort out.

When she'd looked for them later, he'd pointed to the dresser. When she left the next morning, that was where she left his favourite black corset.

It was easier.

They were already neatly stacked, but he piled them in one at a time anyway.

His bathroom had been easier for her to move into. The toothbrush hadn't even been hers - it was one of the spares his decorator had left for guests – few that he had. She'd brought her own brand of toothpaste because she hated his. Sometimes he used hers when she wasn't around. He thought she probably knew, and didn't seem to care. It was what he used at her place anyway.

These weren't things she necessarily wanted back, but he thought she'd want the proof that he didn't still have them. He tucked them into a side pocket, along with her brush and comb, lotion and conditioner, shampoo and body wash. He liked that it left her smelling pink and scrubbed when she came out tucked into a towel. Sometimes he wished she would use his things again, like when she first spent the night. It was fascinating how different they smelled on her hair and skin, close and secret.

The room looked bare without them.

Her razor. She'd been very touchy the first time he wandered in while she perched on the edge of the tub, running the blade up her calf. He'd rolled his eyes and sighed, walking right back out. Then found a little too much fun when she was done, tickling behind her knees and testing every inch of skin for a stray hair.

The next week they'd had a break in the production schedule, and she'd gone for a wax, stowing the razor on the shelf above his.

There was a handful of jewelry in his nightstand. Nothing she cared too much about: a couple pairs of large earrings, a necklace, chunky rings and a ridiculous bracelet that had dragged cool and heavy down his chest.

The bag was still only half-full. He felt like there should be more. She was – she'd been – all over his place, or at least it had felt that way. As it turned out, she'd never left much of herself at all.

Maybe it was because he'd never seen the point in having much of his own. And her apartment was layered with her things, each and every one somehow making sense.

Or maybe it was because he'd thought he liked things clean, smooth, black and white in updated modern, straight from a magazine. Which it was. When he was done with it, his designer had kicked him out for a day so he could bring a camera crew in.

She was nothing but colour and texture and carefree laughter dusting the walls. Next to her, his place felt like a blank canvas, waiting...

Not that there'd been much to laugh about, lately. He'd assumed it would be back when this latest stressful phase of Bombshell had passed.

He ignored Tom, waiting near the door, and crossed into the kitchen instead. A box of her tea – technically he'd ordered it with his weekly groceries, but she'd used it, smiling over the rim of her mug. It wasn't like he would ever drink it. An empty water bottle, left behind at some point he couldn't remember. It had been there for so long it looked like it belonged there, next to his highball glasses.

They were dropped into the bag, carelessly, self-conscious now that he had an audience.

She had some things in the fridge, but he was hardly going to send them over. Fruit and her mandated skim milk and yoghurt would be going a bit far, even if the goal was to pull her completely out of his life.

Was there anything else?

A few CDs by his stereo. Life was digital, nowadays, but there were a few things she would only listen to "uncompressed." He suspected she would prefer to use records, if she had the space or the cash.

He would have bought them for her, if she'd ever brought it up. Would have put it anywhere she liked. For years he'd had one, even a large-ish collection of vinyl lined up, vaguely alphabetized and gathering dust. He'd hired someone to take them away, years ago.

That was all, he thought, mentally walking through every room, imagining her there, what she would be doing. He pulled a scarf off his coat rack. There was nothing else but memories.

The zipper hissed finality in an empty sort of way.

Tom took the bag without a word.

He was relieved about that. He didn't want to talk about it.

As soon as the door shut, he sat on the stairs, staring at the bag Tom had left behind.

"Oh good, you're home!" Tom had announced, rather unnecessarily.

"Clearly." He'd sighed. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Well, Ivy was doing some spring cleaning, you know, out with the old, in with the new range of lipsticks..."

"Point, Tom?"

He'd winced. "She just thought you might like these back – some things you'd left over at her place."

He'd glared down at one of his own duffels, a little confused, though hell if he'd admit it. When he hadn't moved to take it, Tom had put it carefully to the side.

"And she thinks she might have left some of her things over here."

Prevarication was a trait he'd never liked in Tom. "She _thinks_?"

Tom dropped the act. Derek thought he was happy about it – not being foolish was something Tom used to say he liked about _him_. "Look, now that you two have broken up, she wants her stuff. And she is, understandably, a little afraid to come over herself, so I said I'd do it."

He wanted to know what _that_ was supposed to mean, but he certainly wasn't going to ask _Tom_.

So he'd taken the bag and gone upstairs without another word.

* * *

She was curled into a ball waiting for Tom. Their brief phone conversation hadn't made perfect sense from her end, but he'd picked up the gist and promised to come right over.

Her closet stared back at her, and it was like she was a little girl, afraid of monsters in the dark. Or, in this case, a big girl shying away from a dark stripe in a row of colour and light.

Derek's clothes.

The plan was to have someone help her, but the waiting was too much and she wanted, needed, to root him out herself.

His duffel was under her bed alongside her own luggage. She'd packed it for him. Not exactly. She'd pulled it out of a closet and pitched it next to him one morning, telling him to put something in it so he wouldn't always leave her place smelling like sex.

He didn't (usually). But she already had a few outfits at his condo, and didn't want to be the only one. Not that it was a big deal. They were only clothes, after all.

Everything he owned looked roughly the same, all grays and blacks, soft stretchy materials with the occasional dark denim or dress shirt with the crisp worn out.

She folded a couple of long sleeve tops, starting a pile on her bed. A dark dress shirt. Another, worn to a soft finish. She ran her fingers along the collar and down the buttons. She'd put it on for him once, when they were in the middle of a relaxed night in. Almost every night was a night in, though they weren't always relaxed. Unbuttoned just enough to hint that she had nothing on underneath, she'd panicked a little at his serious reaction, examining her critically with a hint of glare. She'd been halfway back to the bathroom, fingers fumbling at the front, before he caught her around the waist and smoothed the fabric against her stomach.

He'd finished unbuttoning her not long after that, but the shirt had never quite made it all the way off.

Jeans and trousers joined the stack. A pair of his loose rehearsal pants. If she didn't need to give everything back, she would keep them. He was tall but lean, and the net result of her curvy figure meant they fit her just as well. So long as she rolled the bottoms up a foot.

She'd borrow them sometimes, when she was lounging around and her usual yoga pants weren't feeling comfy. One night he'd come over unexpectedly when a meeting was canceled at the last minute, and found her in them.

She'd been blushing pretty badly. All he'd done was raise an eyebrow, laugh, and spend a good portion of the evening finding all the interesting ways in which he could _not_ take them off of her.

A quick guesstimation later, and one pile became two, roughly level in the bottom of the bag.

She emptied her sock drawer on top, and fished her things out. It was easier. When she wasn't in sneakers at the gym she was always in dance shoes, or in regular heels.

There was something pleasant about pulling her laundry from the machines and sorting out the male from the female. It was fun to be one of those people who were instantly more interesting, by virtue of the invisible person who fit that second set of clothing.

She washed all his clothes that way, when he tossed them into her hamper. He had everything dry cleaned, but most of it was marked washable and the alternative would be a ridiculous bill.

They didn't smell the same, fresh from a dryer, he had to have noticed. But he never seemed to care.

There wasn't much in the bathroom. An electric razor, lying next to her tampons. It was funny: Derek was always a little rumpled, like he didn't give a damn. Really, he was a little vain, keeping his scruff at his preferred length. Even his trademark shock of hair had a little help. She put the cream respectfully under his shirts. He liked to pretend it didn't exist.

He always used her shampoo and soap, which was a weird way to hold back from the intimacy of shared toiletries. His usual brands left him clean and manly. Hers left him vaguely floral and citrusy. It always made her giggle, sniffing down his neck and chest and burying her nose against his scalp.

A couple of times someone else had noticed, shot him a strange look as they stood too close and he railed about something or other. She'd giggle, and when the other person had gone off he'd give her an annoyed look that meant he wasn't really annoyed at all.

Maybe that was why he did it. The sniffing and the the insider secret. That thought caused a pang.

Toothbrush, which she dropped in the trash.

A belt, hanging off the side of her dresser. A scarf that had been looped over her dressmaker's dummy for so long that she'd forgotten it didn't really belong.

A couple books on Marilyn she'd borrowed. The library could only offer up so many, and she'd picked up a few from Amazon, along with the DVDs. But Derek had everything, or near enough.

An old script she found under a pile of movies on her TV. It was one he'd read when Bombshell was up in the air. Probably she should recycle it, but he might want it. Into the bag it went. Along with what turned out to be a marked up score for Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Oops. It had looked like scratch paper when face down, and she'd doodled on the back, keeping tally for an ill-fated game of charades with Sam, Dennis, and Jessica.

That was it.

She was taking a last scan when Tom knocked on the door.

"Hey, are you okay? What's happening?"

Leaving him to close the door, she zipped up everything of Derek she had (minus memories she couldn't shake), and held it up, helpless. "I did it."


	2. felt so lonely in your company

_A/N: Forgot to say, title and inspiration for first chapter from "Somebody That I Used To Know" by Goyte. This chapter also includes a line pilfered from Power Play, for the 8.2 people in the world who might recognize it, if they were also Smash fans._

* * *

She'd been offered a part in another workshop. Her agent had sent the pages over that morning. It would probably go nowhere, like most new shows, but it was a solo and a duet and the character had promise.

The pages were heavy and she was jittery. Not that she hadn't done dozens of these before, over the years. But it had been so long, Bombshell had gone so far, that she stuck the pages into her bag and spent an hour at the gym sweating out the nerves and washing them away before settling in at her favourite cafe to try again.

The comings and goings and the heavy iron chairs kept her right where she needed to be: grounded and logical. The workshop was a good idea, a good opportunity. It wasn't like she was busy. This was as least better than her ensemble role in Bombshell had been. And it was never a bad idea to stick your fingers in a few more pies; the fragments of points you could pick up, even this early, was what kept many an actor from starving during lean times.

Finger tapping along absentmindedly on her coffee cup, she hummed the melody underneath the ambient noise. Actually, it was rather nice, and she was already picking out places where she could draw out emotion and pull the audience along. Maybe it was a bit too reminiscent of Into the Woods, but the writers were new, and there was plenty of time f-

Someone dropped heavily into the seat across from her, even though the place was half-empty.

"Derek." The soft, surprised tone was not in any of the scripts she'd rehearsed, thinking about the first time she'd see him after...

"Candy From Strangers?" He inclined his head, thumb rubbing over the side of his cup.

She collected herself. "Yes."

"Tom." He clarified, to her silent question. "It'll never go anywhere."

As if she didn't know that. Not everyone could just stumble into a Bombshell, and not everyone had the luxury to pick and choose. As if he didn't know that.

She made a noncommittal sound, and flipped over to a page of dialogue, trying to focus on the words while hyper aware of him lounging so close his sneakers were almost nudging her bag. Most of her lines were nothing special, but with the right emphasis and pauses – she wasn't afraid to play for laughs.

Or at least two lines had promise, since that's what she kept reading, over and over, cycling back when her attention wandered. When it reached the point past which she could reasonably pretend to still be on the same page, and he was still sitting there, being quiet, she brought up the only other thing there was to talk about. Even if she didn't want to.

"I hear Bombshell is doing well." Tactfully, no one had brought up details, but with funding secured, they were moving swiftly on towards Broadway.

"Yes." He looked a little cranky, but that was his problem.

Nothing more was forthcoming. Fine. He was the one who'd sat down. If he'd expected anything more from her, she didn't owe it to him to figure it out. She moved on to the next page, on which she'd already made a couple notes.

Eventually, he'd give up and go away, and it would be over with. Broadway was a tiny community and they had people in common, so avoiding him entirely wasn't possible. But still, first meeting, no casualties. It could only go up from here.

"Look, Ivy," he leaned forwards, elbows almost on her side of the small table. "You know I had to, it's about the show. You know that."

Unless it went further down.

"So what," she cut indignant, "It's all my fault now?"

"Of course not-"

"Bombshell is fine, I'm not even _there_." _She_ was. Bombshell had its Marilyn. She leaned forward herself, hissing the words. "What else could you possibly want from me?" She would have left anyway. She couldn't stand in the shadows watching K- watching _her_ catapult to fame using phrasing and choreography she hadn't – _couldn't_ have - developed. It happened all the time but not like this. She would have left anyway.

She hadn't needed the non-subtle comments spread through second hand gossip, that her continued presence was only upsetting their star.

Bastards.

Would have served _her_ right, after all those weeks spent screaming in her ear, simpering for every scrap of attention and pretending she didn't want any of it, it just happened! To! Her! Because Oh! She's just a Sweet! Perfect! Innocent! Girl from Iowa! And-

Who knew what her internal rant looked like from the outside. Probably pretty pissed. Derek's eyes were on the floor somewhere near the next table over. Suddenly she didn't want him to run. She wanted him to try and explain, justify using her and lying to her and never even giving her a fair chance. She wanted to break him down until... until something. She'd know it when she had it.

Finger pads stopped scraping over his thumbnail for half a second as he met her eyes, started up again as he looked away. "What was I was supposed to do? " He held the pause as his eyes held hers.

Hello, Further Depths of Hell. Now he wanted her to tell him how to not piss off his next girlfriend. Everyone had stayed away from that topic entirely, but it wasn't as if it hadn't crossed her mind that Newly Single Iowa would jump at the chance to date her Adoring and Powerful Director. Every time he got near her she'd wiggle and hold her breath like he was her first crush.

And now he wanted her to once again be the stand in, work out all the kinks so when it was show time, the lead would find it all running smoothly.

"For starters," she had actually intended to storm off, but the chance to slap him, even a little, the very real possibility that this would be the only chance she ever got, won out. Even if it became just another way Iowa benefited from her pain. "Standing up your girlfriend to screw someone else is pretty much the universal definition of a bad idea."

The tragedy was, that hadn't actually been the worst of it.

"You slept with Dev," he calmly replied. Then, after a pause, "and Lyle."

Someone had told him. Of course, he didn't even care. In his world, sex was just a power play.

"I didn't sleep with Lyle," she countered. She hadn't, and wouldn't have. Especially not with a room full of people downstairs. Some flirting, a little making out was all she had been expecting, before they'd run into Eileen.

Not that this was a real defense, but he gave her the point anyway.

"And Dev," she didn't know why she felt the need to defend herself, when he was the one who was always abandoning her to screw around. "I slept with him after you slept with Rebecca."

He narrowed his eyes, but there was only a hint of edge to his voice. "I told you why I-"

"No, you didn't. You gave me another stupid story about how you're always right."

"I never said-"

"You asked what you could have done instead? You're a smart guy, figure it out." She threw words from their past at him, because they haunted her.

"That's it?" His voice was strained.

She shook her head. In for a penny, in for a pound. This wasn't a conversation she intended to have again, and she didn't want to have it only halfway.

"You always say 'that's the truth,' like it means something. It doesn't. You do lie, Derek," his shoulders twitched, "And you lie about things that matter."

"I never told you anything that wasn't true."

She scooted back in her chair. "The sad thing is, I believe you believe that." And he believed passionately. She missed that. "But you also leave out a lot of important things."

"Like?" He dug his fingers into his arm.

Endless nights flashed through her mind. "Like you were never going to give me Marilyn. Not for real."

"I didn't know that."

"Why did you go over to Karen's place in the middle of the night to apologize?"

He sighed, another conversation he'd already resolved. "Because you told me to."

"You're blaming me, again?"

"Why did you lie about your voice going, and wait to fall apart in the middle of rehearsal," he countered.

His voice was starting to match her own, cutting but not quite mean. She blinked. Partly because she'd thought he was too groggy that morning to remember anything. Mostly because, sadly, this was probably as honest as they'd ever been. Too little, too late. It hurt like anything, but maybe it always needed to happen.

"You know why."

His eyebrows raised.

"You would have taken me out and put in Karen in a heartbeat."

His jaw tightened. "Which we almost had to do anyway."

She let it drop. She didn't want to talk about the drugs he'd bullied her into taking, and everything that happened after. He didn't know, she didn't want him to know. It almost didn't matter anymore. He would never think he'd done anything wrong, and he'd never try to understand why she wasn't wrong either.

She pitched the script into the open top of her gym bag.

"Look, Derek," she bit her tongue, hard, in case she started to cry. It was easier to hate him than to admit that she hadn't. "I liked you a lot." The coffee was still warm in her hand. "Probably more than you deserved." It wasn't as if she wanted to drink it anymore, but it helped to hold onto something. "I don't think there was anything you could do, really. It's just who you are. Or who you think you are," she amended.

He made no move to respond. She was glad, in a way.

"I thought you could be-" Oh, the power of self-delusion. "I thought you _wanted_ to be something else. And you thought I'm something I'll never be." Almost. But she wasn't like him, she couldn't go that far. "We were never going to work. Sleep with her, your star, date her, don't try to have it both ways and you'll be fine."

Grabbing her bag with her free hand, she stood up.

Karen didn't deserve to find out the hard way either. In case she was right, and Derek would move on to his next star, eventually, and she'd just be another walking legend he'd discovered.

Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to meet his eyes. And ignore what looked like a little bit of pain around the edges. She'd thought she wanted to hurt him. What she really wanted was to understand. Something else she could never have.

"But next time you should tell her first, before you move on."

She was already heading for the exit when he stopped her. "Why did you sleep with Dev?"

Who was asking, Karen or Derek? It couldn't possibly matter, at this point. It wasn't like her motives weren't obvious, to anyone but him.

"Karen had just ditched him during his proposal, you'd just ditched me. Sometimes it's nice not to be alone."

Poor Dev. He'd been cruel to her. But then, she didn't think he'd ever quite accepted that Karen wasn't as perfect as he thought she was (or she thought she was), and that was his problem.

It struck her again that she was very good at being heartless, when she didn't mean to be. Sleeping with Dev had given Derek the last piece to turn Karen into whatever it was he saw that made her a star. By his own professional obsession, he should be thanking her, not sulking. She was the only one who had gotten hurt, in the end. Her and Dev.

"Now _you're_ lying."

She was. Oh, sure, she'd done it to make herself feel better. With Lyle, too. But she'd also wanted to hurt Derek back. Another way life backfired. Since she was the only one who came out of it worse off than before.

"What does it matter?" she asked, with a brittle smile. The final question. What had she mattered. What had they mattered?

She waited for a moment; it was a rhetorical question, but she was curious to see if he had an answer anyway. At last, he came to some sort of decision, speaking so low she had to lean closer to hear.

"_I _didn't think we were over."

There was something in that she didn't want to examine too closely.

It was easier to assume the obvious. Ivy and Dev were the villains. Derek and Karen got to be the heroes. A match made in – as good an excuse as any to get what they wanted, in a way not even prudish Karen could object. Hell, it was probably even romantic, if you were hearing about it as a story. Beauty and the Beast, Phoenix from the Ashes, Cinderella in her Castle in the Stars...

"Fuck you," she spat. And before he could say anything else, she was gone.


	3. said that you could let it go

_A/N: I do like to reply to each review, so we're kicking it old school - replies to those I can't PM are at the end of the chapter._

* * *

A month later her phone rang as she was packing up after rehearsal. It was Dennis, talking in excited bursts. Before he finished, a crowd was call waiting or texting her in a jumble. They all said the same thing.

_Derek just fired Karen._

Sam was waiting when she got home. She took a quick shower, trying not to care beyond the usual interest in dramatic gossip, with a little bit of satisfaction on top. None of it had anything to do with her, not anymore.

"What happened?" She curled damply in her armchair with her glass of wine.

"He's been losing it ever since Boston, but we thought it was just Derek being Derek. You know how he can get." Sam winced a little, watching for a reaction. They hadn't talked about the break up. "Today he freaked out. It was bad, even from him."

More than once, Derek had driven her close to her breaking point. Once, she _had_ snapped. Not much could be worse than that, nothing that wouldn't result in someone calling 911. There was a line, he bent it all the time and slid over it now and then, but there was still a line. Whatever he'd done now, it probably wasn't that bad, not really. It would just look worse because Karen wasn't Ivy Lynn, she was so innocent and beautiful that any little snip was like kicking a puppy.

"One minute it was about missing a cue, the next it was something about costumes and coming back down to Earth, and he fired her." Not much flummoxed Sam, but this had him talking serious. "I know she's the last person you'd feel sorry for, but the way she ran out crying-" He shook his head, a note beyond his usual blanket compassion. "I don't think she even knew what he was screaming about."

At least she wasn't the only one he abused. That was her first thought, and that was very callous. Let her get a taste of how the other half lived. That was her second. Sam would understand, he had known her through a lot and for a long time. Still, she pushed those thoughts aside.

"Derek gets that way. It'll blow over and she'll be back Monday morning." By flattery, threat, or whatever it took: Derek always got his way.

"I don't think so." He had to be wrong. But the thing was, Sam was a pretty good judge of people. He always had been. He eyed her over the rim of his glass, waiting. Gossip was a guilty pleasure. He'd dispense, but only after you put in a question.

She took a sip herself. More of a gulp, really. "Why?"

He resettled himself, leaning over the coffee table, strong lines and muscles, even though there was no one to overhear. "Tom's been in prod meetings every night this week. That's where he is now. He won't talk about what's going on, but it's something big."

She let that sink in. "It could be anything. Investors, sets, booking a theatre, a million things." With such a compressed timeline, every detail was up in the air every minute, and nothing could fall through the cracks.

He nodded, but not believing. "Could be."

"She did an amazing job at previews. The reviews said so, everyone-" She winced. "Everyone said so, Derek said so." Not that she'd thought he'd be disappointed, not after he chose his star so definitively. Derek always got his way, and Derek was always right. "Why would they want to change her out now, even for another star?" After all, she'd risen above the star. With the world watching.

"She was great in Boston, but you haven't seen her lately. It's not that she's bad, exactly..."

"But?"

"But I probably shouldn't be telling you this. I'm not supposed to know. Hell, I _don't_ know. But last weekend, Tom went somewhere dressed up."

Only a little unusual, unless- He wouldn't. She'd known him through more than a few boyfriends. He moved on, but he didn't cheat. "You think he's seeing someone else?"

"What?" Sam's head shot up. The tension of the evening broke when he laughed. "No. Look, I really don't know anything, but I think they did a private show. You know how it goes."

She did. Investors wanted to be kept in the loop, the influential and the just-plain-rich-and-famous wanted a peek at something they could be smugly silent about to their friends, pleading the confidentiality clause. It would have been Karen, a pianist, maybe their DiMaggio, for scene work or duets.

"And you don't think it went well?"

He fell back, lounging as only a dancer could, and spread his hands. "All I know is that today, Derek fired Karen, and Tom and Julia didn't look very surprised."

They spent the evening skimming through topics: Sam and Tom, Ivy and Peter (whom she was sort of seeing), fumigation and the pregnancy scandal in Wicked. Then a movie, light and familiar. Perfectly non-demanding, because Ivy couldn't shake one strange, confusing thought:

Derek had fired Karen.

* * *

The next morning, her phone woke her up before her alarm clock had the chance.

"Hello?"

"Ivy, hello. I hope I'm not waking you?"

Clearly, from her groggy greeting, she had indeed been woken. But she was Eileen. Ivy woke up fast.

"No, I was just getting up. How are you?" An exchange of pleasantries with a major producer at 6.30 in the morning. Theatre had its moments.

"I'll cut to the chase. I think you know why I'm calling. These days everyone has their phones out any time something interesting happens, and I hear yesterday was quite interesting."

Ivy offered a noncommittal agreement. Gossip did spread fast.

"We've lost our Marilyn" Eileen continued briskly. "We need you back."

It was what she'd been waiting - _hoping_ – to hear ever since she'd found out. Now that it was happening... She wasn't sure she could do it. Second choice yet again, the stress of living up to Karen's performance, which was sweet and soft, apparently what they wanted and absolutely nothing like her own. The very real possibility that Karen wasn't really gone this time either, and when Karen came back, what was left over but more cutting nothing?

Her thinking had manifested as a lengthy pause.

"Don't give me an answer now. Think it over – Tom is going to find you later to talk specifics." Eileen's voice wasn't exactly a kind voice. But it was reassuring, in an efficient sort of way.

"Okay." She managed to sound like she was not freaking out. "Thank you for considering me"

Eileen wasn't kind, but she did do gentle. Professional to personal, a blurry transition at the heart of so many troubles in Bombshell.

"Ivy, you were always a spectacular Marilyn. You were my choice. And not just mine." A smile drifted along.

Tom had always been behind her. Julia, she thought, had wanted her mostly because she was a safer bet in the last hours. It didn't matter now.

"Thank you," she breathed, just before the line went dead.

* * *

It was Sunday, no rehearsal. A long shower cleared her head, a deep clean of her apartment settled her nerves, all the while thinking of all the ways it could end badly.

Derek figured into most of them.

Tom waited until 9, a more decent hour, inviting her out to brunch. He was cagey about it, in the too-cheery tone only he couldn't see through.

"I know, Tom. Eileen called me earlier."

"Oh good! So, um, what are you thinking?"

She sighed, settling down on her stripped bed. "I think I don't know what to think."

"We can work with that." He was going to do his best to convince her. She knew he was.

It was too bad he could never protect her when things went south.

* * *

Tom was already in a booth when she got there, a carafe of coffee and glasses of water waiting alongside him.

Part way into the meal they were still avoiding skirting the topic, but Ivy finally felt ready to face the real reason they were there.

"Did Derek really fire Karen?"

Tom put down his fork. "It's a little more complicated than that."

"She's pregnant?" Her heart was pounding. She didn't know why she had asked that.

He raised an eyebrow. "I don't think so. But we've been talking for a week or so now."

That fit. "Since the private show."

"Are there no secrets in this town?" he asked the room at large, taken aback.

One of the kids at a nearby table decided to answer. "Not if you shout!" General laughter and snickering commenced. In this part of the city, entertainment was a way of life.

Secrets were not. "Sam saw you going out, and with what was happening in rehearsals," she shrugged, poking at her eggs, "live in the ensemble long enough, and you learn to put the pieces together."

She'd read a book once, she couldn't remember much about it, but there was a cop, who said you could only know your city, own your city, after years pounding the pavement. And no one who hadn't would ever understand. That was the ensemble, she'd felt. Writers, producers, investors, _directors_; they owned and ran and shaped the shows, but they'd never really get it, walk the dark alleys, not like Ivy and her friends did. Not even Tom.

"Well, since the cat's already out of the bag," he poured syrup until his plate was an amber lake. "We did have a small show, to keep everyone excited about giving us their money."

"And she blew it?" That didn't sound like Karen, not when she knew the piece. Unless she'd had another fit and run off.

"Not exactly, no." He looked more troubled than anything. "She sounded great, don't get me wrong. There was just something a little... _off_."

The same _something_ Karen had that she didn't? It wasn't fair to hit Tom with that one, even though it had punched her in the stomach and sent the contents roiling. It wasn't like he knew.

He was too preoccupied to notice her distress. "We didn't think it was a problem, exactly, everyone else was happy, but Derek stormed out in the middle of the USO number, and started calling meetings."

Talking about why she should rejoin the production, fine. But these were details she shouldn't know, edging into facts beyond the whispered gossip. She watched the ketchup, biting her lip.

"I wouldn't be saying this if you weren't you. If we weren't asking what we are. But Eileen thought you needed to know."

"Why?"

"So you'd know we're serious. If you come back, you're with us to Broadway. Unless," he smiled teasingly into the silence, trying to lighten the mood. "Unless you go off to become a big TV star, and abandon us."

As if she ever would. But her biggest fear was still her biggest fear. "What if Derek brings her back?"

This was a question he had been anticipating. "First off, we don't think he'll try. I haven't been to as many rehearsals lately, so I haven't seen it myself, but the way he's been talking all week, this isn't a recent thing."

She wondered if that thing was Karen sleeping with him... Or _not_ sleeping with him. Tom might not even know, the ensemble probably would, but she still didn't want to ask. Maybe this was Derek, listening to her final advice. Only he got tired of his star too fast and cast it all off? That didn't sound like Derek.

Maybe it was Karen, finally seeing Derek for who he was, and dumping _him_. That sounded like Karen. Overreacting did sound a lot like Derek.

As reassurances went, it wasn't very good.

Tom lay a hand on hers, until she looked up. "Second, he can't. Now that were officially a go, Eileen holds all the contracts, and I think Boston was the last straw. She's sick of letting Derek walk all over her. Not to mention excited about having you back, of course," he squeezed her fingers. "Everyone is."

They would hardly say otherwise.

She didn't want to ask this either, but she had to. "Even Derek?" she whispered.

"Especially Derek," he replied firmly. "As soon as he stopped telling us why Karen needed to go, he was pushing to bring you back." He dropped his fork with a splatter at her frown. "It wasn't a hard sell. We were just surprised, after Boston, and what happened there. With him."

Apparently, she was now the whim of the day. He'd always gone back and forth, playing them off one another.

"Why did he want _me_? There's time, anyone could learn it."

Tom's gleeful smile spread slowly. "You should have been there." Glee on Tom was actually very entertaining, even under the circumstances. "We made him eat so much crow. I've never seen him just sit there and take it like that – it's part of why I know he's serious."

She'd seen Derek like that. A few times. But particularly-

"He said– a lot of things, but mostly he kept going back to the USO number we did at Lyle's birthday party, you remember? He said everyone in the room was drawn in, and having fun," he paused, recalling. "And that they felt safe and close and that was what Marilyn was about, and what a show should be about."

She was surprised he'd had time to watch, between flirting sessions. But it had been a great night. She'd felt it. They all had. Even Derek had said so, but she hadn't thought he really meant it. So much of the time, she'd wondered if he ever meant anything at all.

"That was one night."

Tom blinked rapidly.

She got it. "Karen didn't."

He nodded.

If she had done anything better than Karen in Derek's eyes, that was something. She still craved his approval. She wished she didn't. All she wanted was to be first, for once. And to get to stay there. More than anything, she wanted her chance to be a star, for someone to believe in her enough to fight for her, and win.

"If I come back," she loved Marilyn, she was trying to move on but she knew in her heart it could only be Marilyn. "Wait, is Karen back in the ensemble?"

His hair tossed in vigorous negation. "Not this time. Not even if she wanted to."

"If I do..." There was only ever going to be one answer. Except for one thing that might make it impossible. "If I do, do I have to talk to Derek? I don't mean in rehearsal," she clarified. "I know he's the Director. But you know we were..." It wasn't discretion that made her trail off. She'd never actually known what they were, what she should call it.

"You don't have to talk to him." Tom's voice was low.

She'd never talked to him about her relationship with Derek, not their personal one. But he had to know. Everyone knew. And Sam would have told him things.

"Eileen's already warned him not to speak to you until you've made up your mind."

It seemed _everyone_ knew _everything_ about her life.

"And if you say yes, he can't talk to you outside rehearsal, or about anything other than the show. She threatened to strangle him, in her deadly voice." Tom thrust a fork at an imaginary Derek. "And if he does, tell him to fuck off. He can't do anything to you."

Nice in theory. Except she kept remembering that last conversation they'd had. How he'd sat down, when they didn't have anything to talk about. How she couldn't quite convince herself, even in the moment, that it was all about Karen. If he started it again – not that he would, not after how she'd left – but if he did, she wasn't sure she'd be able to walk away.

It made her chest flutter, fear and pain and a little bit excited. It was a risk she had to take. It was for Marilyn. She'd done scarier things for her dreams.

"Yes."

"Yes?"

"Yes, I want Marilyn. I want to come back to the show."

Saying it made it real.

The rest of brunch was fun - the weight of indecision lifted - almost giddy, and full of sugar when Tom's syrup lake lapped over the insufficient lip of his plate. She left with laundry to do, but also with a plan:

Today: Call Candy From Strangers and quit.

Monday: Meeting with Eileen to sign paperwork.

Tuesday: Dinner with Tom and Sam. Fail to call Mother until Bombshell was literally opening on Broadway.

Wednesday: _Rehearsal_.

* * *

_Charlene - Thank you for the support, and I'm glad you enjoyed it! Not to worry; with a dozen years of tiny fandoms and odd ships behind me, I'm content to march to the beat of my own (oft peculiar) drum. :)_

_Ella - Aw, thank you!_

_Shanshii - It was a oneshot (and I still love it as one). But constantly breaking them up was depressing, and ch1 left an opening for a chance to (eventually) work things out. They deserve it, eh?_

_Ann - ITA, they just work on so many levels, even if most people don't see it. Truth be told, I hate the show, to the point where it morally offends me seven ways to Sunday, but I suffer through it because of how evocative Derek/Ivy is, even in the harshest moments._


	4. you treat me like a stranger

_A/N: Early heads up, but with ch6, this story will be rated M for sexual content. It's not terribly explicit, but it is beyond a T. If this is a problem for anyone who otherwise would like to keep reading, drop me a line and I'll work something out._

* * *

On Wednesday she got to the studio building early, and spent 20 minutes hiding around the corner. It wasn't about making a grand entrance, she was scared to death of walking in to find herself alone with Derek.

Of course she would have to see him, talk to him; she just wanted there to be people around.

With seven minutes to spare she lagged behind a chatting group. She really had missed everyone, had known many of them much longer than a single show, and was a happy little nucleus to a rotating cloud of hugs and congratulations until a loud "Places Please" dispersed them throughout the room.

The morning was light, crawling through some of the choreography she already knew, and showing her the changes. Dancers were paid to learn and remember, but it still felt nice when she only missed a few steps, and finished Let's Be Bad near perfectly on the first full run-through.

That had always been one of her stronger numbers, and one of Karen's weaker ones. An obvious ploy to ease her back into the role and make her feel comfortable, but it was working. She wondered who had set the schedule. Linda, she figured, by the encouraging smiles.

When they called lunch, she didn't want to stop. She could relearn the show in a day, and she wanted to prove it. Marilyn had been her dream. Now that she had her back she didn't want to let her go, not even for an hour. The rehearsal room felt like home, plywood shapes and doppelgangers working on the other side of the mirror. Stench of sweat and white noise whispers. Tom and Sam were forced to tug her out the door, even though she'd already agreed to a light lunch. Light all around; salads and banter.

Except for one minute, when Tom was getting another bottle of water, and Sam leaned over to ask what he had clearly been instructed to not ask. "How's Derek?"

"Fine," she answered, surprised.

She was. He was. She hadn't even noticed him much. All morning he'd been at his table, occasionally offering broad notes or calling a new segment while Josh and the other dancers did the real work. She'd looked his way a few times, to see if he approved, but he was never looking back.

"You'll let us know if he-"

She smiled reassuringly, as Tom sat back down.

She could do this. She was even starting to miss his fits. At least it showed he cared about her performance. Oh well, enjoy the peace while it lasted.

The ensemble had mostly been dismissed for the afternoon, so they could run lines with the new DiMaggio. The majority of the pages were new to her, or at least substantially changed – Julia never did have time or energy for more than a first pass at the book before previews went up. They started in chairs, then standing a few feet apart, using only the most basic blocking as they built a rapport.

Derek was more obviously present, in the relatively empty space. She had to push past her self-consciousness, and stiffen her neck to prevent herself from peeking over for his reaction.

Not that she needed his approval. But she still craved it.

After a while he stood up, gently moving them around the space instead of interrupting with verbal commands. She felt Tom's eyes on them, even more than the light pressure of Derek's fingers on her arm and back. That was novel in and of itself: he'd never touched her before – not in rehearsal.

There were things she was supposed to be feeling, that Tom thought she was feeling, and maybe everyone else thought so too. Maybe she was. She was hurt and angry that Karen had been handed the role after weeks of making her life hell. More like devastated and pissed, especially after Derek had been the one to adorn a platter with praise and support and spoon feed it to her. And it wasn't exactly a picnic finding out he was sleeping with Rebecca. Yet somehow found the time to finally tell his ostensible girlfriend she wasn't good enough, only to mysteriously change his mind.

Those were the things which had already happened. Now she had more to prove than ever, because she wasn't just a second choice, but a castoff. If she wasn't better than perfect, she was a failure.

She did feel all that, acutely. Yet still, all she wanted, in the moment, was to work. Tom's stare and Derek's fingertips were unsettling, but when she concentrated on her line delivery, and mapped DiMaggio onto the face in front of her, she could forget they were even there.

It was everything she'd ever wanted. And no one could take it from her this time, except herself. She'd figured that one out during her self-inflicted pariah days in Candy From Strangers. And Eileen had promised, her agent had approved the contract, and there were even hints regarding some of the investors being very curious to see what she did with it.

She felt safe enough, from herself and from the world, to focus, and take risks. She'd always been good, maybe better than good. Now she was shooting for great, and maybe better than great. Hoping that somewhere along the way she'd become a star. Because that was what they were entrusting her to do.

* * *

Thursday was a lot like Wednesday, only they started in on choreography for one of the songs she'd never done. Again, Josh was in charge, Derek offering broad commands and periodically calling his assistant choreographer back for a powwow.

It was holding her back, and that was irritating. Derek was getting irritated too; she could tell when he slumped lower in his chair, and stopped taking notes. But she couldn't make the changes if he didn't tell her what he wanted. He wasn't even telling her what he _didn't_want.

At least he was watching her today.

Peter, her kind-of boyfriend, was meeting her for lunch, so she tried to shake her frustrations away.

"Perfect!" she replied brightly, when he asked how things were going. He was pretty perceptive, quirking an eyebrow but choosing to drop the matter in favour of the gallery opening they were going to that weekend. She liked that about him. She also found it annoying.

After lunch Derek was even crankier. His chats with Josh were becoming more energetic, and despite her persisting fear that he was regretting bringing her back, she suspected she wasn't the whole problem. He wasn't just ignoring _her;_ he hadn't been yelling, or even talking sharply, to _any_of them.

The ensemble was already whispering speculation. The most popular theories were either an actual stroke, some sort of restraining order, or he'd finally been put on heavy medication.

Privately, Ivy knew he had to have a plan in mind, she just didn't know what it was.

Near the end of the day they were doing one last run-through of the first half of Dig Deep. Despite religious trips to the gym, dance classes, and of course her work on Candy, she was getting tired. Sam and Dennis had to lower her early when she couldn't keep her arms straight. She tripped, a little stumble when making a turn. Nothing too bad, but Derek should have been all over every single one.

He wasn't. She didn't have time to look closer.

When Linda called the day she grabbed her water, dawdling by the windows. If they couldn't work together the show would suffer, and a great Director was much more important than a nobody actress. Even Eileen would have to agree to let her go. And Derek wasn't great at proactive problem solving; if he was snubbing her now, he might never stop on his own.

She needed the part, and she needed the show to be as good as it could possibly be. The awkwardness of being exes shouldn't even be a factor, if that's what it was. It wasn't like he'd had any trouble yelling at her when they _were_together.

Five feet away and she was just about to speak when Derek looked up from his laptop. It was the first real eye contact they'd had in weeks, and it threw her off, how neutral he was. He cared about _everything_related to the show. Fanatically so. What was she, a turnip? No point in trying? Anything is better than nothing when his choice didn't work out? Playing the stick against a carrot to groom Karen for a bigger and better role, something crafted for her alone?

She started again anyway, taking a step closer and getting out "Why are you-" before Tom swooped in and whisked her away, talking loudly about a new transition he was working on.

When she looked back, Derek was gone.

Glancing in the same direction, Tom lowered his voice to a normal level. "Ivy-"

"What was that about?"

"He can't talk to you outside rehearsal." He tapped his watch.

Tom was sweet, but sweet could be cloying. Derek _wasn't_talking to her, and that was the problem. She pushed down the frustration. Tom did it out of love.

* * *

Friday was under-scheduled as well, re-orienting her with the last finished songs in the morning, and a little work on a new song that afternoon. By Monday she'd be off book, and the real work could begin.

Josh was out for the day, and Derek gave dry direction, segment by segment. He let her catch his eye a few times, when they were stopped, and it finally struck her, as he narrated another change, that he hadn't used her name, not once. Forget "Ivy" or "Miss Lynn," he hadn't addressed her as "Marilyn" or "Miss Monroe" either. Oh, he'd use the name to refer to her when speaking to someone else, but never to her face.

Brandon, DiMaggio was nice enough, though nowhere near as extroverted as Michael. She focused on connecting, keeping extra tension in her arms to force him to pull against her, and winking at inappropriate moments to make him smile, instead of staring over her head. She was a lot shorter than Karen.

She let it go when Derek told "DiMaggio" to "steady her when she stands up" on the couch.

Right before lunch they squeezed in half an hour with the new song. Tom had invited her over the night before, and they'd run through it a few times. A riff on "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend," it was Marilyn performing the song: close enough to keep the association, while different enough to feel entirely new and revealing. A bit like Let's Be Bad.

She loved it. And not just because it gave her – and Bombshell – a much needed chance to be a little sassy and funny, which was one of her strenghts.

Before they started on choreography they sang it through with the ensemble a few times, nailing down the rhythm and the blending. Something they should have done in the afternoon, but there was something else she'd done with Tom, and he'd wanted to see the response before heading out for another meeting.

He must have told Linda too, because while technically it was lunch, she stayed quiet when Tom winked and called her out front by the piano for a final run.

She hit all the notes, but tickled and toyed, creating an effect of Marilyn without copying her. After all, Marilyn had been much more than her roles, and "the woman behind" was who they were looking for. Marilyn had always been hampered by being typecast as a jaded chorus girl on the make, or similar, but really she was incredible at comedy. Ivy gave some of that back.

It would run counter to the blocking, she knew, when she added moments and gestures layering secret meanings as she pretended to reveal a gartered thigh or winked over an invisible ring. They weren't just double entendres in the typical sense; they let the audience in on the joke of how Marilyn herself was well aware of the role she played.

Most of them were her ideas, though Tom had encouraged her, tossing his own suggestions out and refining a few of hers. She was fairly sure this was a disagreement he'd been having with Derek, and was innocently using her and her secure new status to gain the upper hand. If that was so, she was happy to be used. This way was better.

Blowing diamond dust from her hand, she threw one last coquettish wink over her shoulder in time with the last note. Bobbing a curtsey and nervous smile to gratifying applause and catcalls, she scanned for Tom. He was locked into a staring contest with Derek.

Tom was clapping hard. Derek was not.

After lunch they were supposed to work on the choreography for the Diamond number, but Derek called for Dig Deep again. The new ending wasn't really fleshed out yet, which is why it was on the books for Monday, when he would use the day to move them around like toy soldiers on a battlefield while they exercised their erasers more than their bodies.

They ran through the opening again and again, until Josh gave a thumbs up and Derek stopped flipping pages long enough to announce the lift needed to go in the second half, and they needed to start from the other side of the stage.

Theirs was not to question why.

It wasn't unusual for a lead to offer suggestions or opinions. Not like Rebecca did: she was a Star and made Demands. But Ivy had helped him before, she knew how his mind worked, and he'd always at least listened to her. More than that, she still wanted to feel like she really did have the part, not just on paper, and it was hers to put her stamp on.

Plus Tom was gone, and no one else would stop her.

She tested the waters, asking if he wanted her to fall off the risers, or jump a little so she'd land higher, but flat on the waiting arms.

The effect was immediate. Everyone had been feeling the undercurrent of tension, waiting for it to crack. Heavy silence fell as every head, including the crews', whipped over to Derek. He didn't seem to notice, though there were a few breathless beats before he flicked another page and blandly concluded they would "try it both ways."

It wasn't exactly directed _to_ her, but he'd proven he'd _heard_ her. It was a start. She had a plan herself, and the worst that could happen this time would leave him trying to fire her. A situation which, she'd already concluded, would happen anyway if he kept ignoring her.

An hour later they were working a transition. A line of guys were spinning her across to stage right, one to the next, leaving her about three seconds to run back to the dressing room set at stage left.

Derek was arguing with Eileen – she hadn't seen Eileen come in – about moving the set upstage center and pushing it downstage, scooping her up. Ivy knew why he was resisting: he wanted the clean distinction of spaces, and a smooth journey from one side to the other.

"Excuse me?" Ivy broke in.

They stopped.

"What if half of them spun me this way, and the other half spun me back so I'd end up here?" Pacing it in her head, she stood about ten feet from where she was meant to end up. Much better than thirty.

"Why don't you show us," Eileen said gently, after a critical study of Derek's posture.

Ivy conferred with Josh and the dancers for a couple minutes. The eight of them had stood in one line, but they moved every other one back a pace. She could take a large step while twirling as quickly as a small one, and when the music began again she spun down the front line, before Dennis, at the end, tossed her at the back row to spin back the other way. When the front row crouched down, there was even the added benefit of them looking like they were peeking up her skirt.

She was a little late into position, but she knew it could work once they tweaked spacing and timing.

They kept their little tableau until Derek turned to a wide-eyed Linda, "did you get that?" and moved them on.

Ivy was feeling rather proud of herself. Derek was paying attention to her, and approving. He did still respect her. And it wasn't just that. Her chest was tight with the blinding excitement of finally, finally believing that no matter what had happened before, this was her role, and she would still exist within it no matter how many actresses would take the part after her.

She felt even better when she caught Eileen winking at her, above a strange little smile.

If Derek could talk to her, and take her seriously, and if she could talk to him, and know that he was behind her, then they could be okay. Granted, he was currently doing his bit while pretending he was not, but then she was doubting him so they were about even.

There was just one thing that could ruin her new buzz.

Eileen had left halfway through the afternoon, which she was grateful for. This would be hard enough with the cast and crew watching. She had pride, and a reputation, and didn't need a producer thinking she was contrary on top of it all.

The ending was tricky anyway, with a fast flip off a riser only partially softened by a strong arm before she needed to land cleanly and immediately fall back, facing the audience.

After a few near misses "Again," "Again," "Faster please. Again," the clock was running out and she knew she had it but landed with her toe instead of her heel, falling ungracefully yet again into the quick hands of the ensemble.

"If they caught me and flipped me off the riser, it would be easier." Winded, she almost asked, almost whined. For a second there, she'd been falling harder than she'd anticipated.

Set back on her feet, she automatically took a few steps to make sure she was okay, watching the floor to avoid the confused eyes of the ensemble - she never gave up on _anything_, - and the judgment from everyone else. _I can't do it_ didn't make for a star. Not a real one. Not the one she wanted to be.

Especially not when she knew she _could_ do it.

Derek was staring hard at her, weighing her in his mind. She glared right back, challenging, everything else in the room fading into the background.

It was about to be too much, her ears were burning under the flush of exercise when he broke away, instructing her shoes, and presumably everyone else, to "run it like that."

Her stomach queased as they flipped her around, less flashy, less technical, a mediocre ending. He'd let her break the show. Probably he'd fix it later, and this was only for an hour, but he'd let her break it anyway.

Worse, she'd tried to do it, even though she knew she could figure it out, and would have worked all weekend, and longer, to pull it off. Yet she'd done it, playing a power game, and even though she'd won, she'd lost. Again. She hadn't believed he'd take a _bad_ suggestion, or let her be weaker than she was. Not really.

Because she knew she could do it, and she _knew_ that he knew it too.

* * *

_Anna - :) The season did break Ivy into almost nothing, but there were always hints of more, eh? Not to mention: how would she have made it as long as she did if she was not an incredibly strong person? We shall now quaff various spirits in hopes TPTB figure that out for next season._


	5. hung up on somebody that you usedto know

_A/N: Late warning that we're going M with the next chapter. So if you happen to look, and the story's gone, check your filters. ;)_

* * *

After rehearsal she'd been so grouchy she collected rain-checks for all the drink offers, and spent the evening with Monkey Business instead. Never, not from the first, had she expected it to be easy.

She hadn't expected it to be this hard.

For a few days she'd believed the role was hers, that there was no one left in the wings waiting- well, there were always people waiting for you to screw up so they could step in, that was Broadway. What she'd believed was that they could start over, everyone behind her, and Derek wouldn't be cutting away every few runs to imagine what he would do with Karen in the role.

Now she was back in a nightmare. Broadway was a dream. This was supposed to be all the work in between. Yet here she was, with a Director who could barely look at her, wouldn't direct her, and even if Karen had lost her luster for him, he was either bored with Bombshell or disappointed in her, or worse, couldn't see her as Ivy Lynn, leading lady, but only as Ivy, broken ex-bed partner and all around failure.

Finally shake one monkey off your back, to find your own past haunting your steps. There wasn't much she could do, either. What she thought she knew about him had come up wrong, and she didn't know where they stood.

She couldn't ask.

Around midnight she was wiping moisturizer on her skin. It was early, by theatre standards, but she was beat and going to bed earlier left her more time to warm up before morning rehearsal.

It was a bit too early for shows to have let out, but she still didn't think much of it when someone knocked on her door.

"I never slept with Karen" was an abrupt and unconventional greeting. She didn't know what to do with it.

Derek stepped into the doorway, less like he was trying to come in, and more like he was preventing her from shutting him out. There wasn't much space between them, but he managed to look at the floor rather than at her.

It had taken a while, but eventually she'd believed that he hadn't given her the role in the first place because she'd slept with him. He didn't do that sort of thing, favours like that. Not when they impacted the show.

Now she was wondering, listening to him breath, if she'd _lost_the role because she'd slept with him.

Karen, even Rebecca, got the role first.

"Okay," she wavered.

It wasn't like it did her any good anyway. Karen or no, he never denied sleeping with Rebecca. And he'd looked at her like the stage made her glow, even though she could barely-

If they hadn't slept together first, one of the first times they'd met, maybe he could have seen _her_ as Marilyn, had his great epiphany with _her_, and none of this would have happened. Or maybe it was all an excuse in her head, and he had given her the role because he saw something in her, at first. Only he saw more in Karen.

He loomed very well, a step closer. Without heels, she was level with his chest.

She froze when he dropped his head, exhaling over her neck, warmth a stark contrast to the cooler air. She shivered.

"What do you want from me?" he whispered, so soft the words spread without a hint of gravel.

Moments like this, with him, she wondered if maybe she wasn't the only one who was confused. But Derek always knew what he wanted, what he was doing, even if he changed his mind later. In the end, all she had were wants, never quite able to make them happen. But she knew she wasn't the only one who put the show first.

One thing show business had taught her was how to work through nerves. He was close enough to kiss her, grab her, his body was still familiar and she still understood _that. _Fight or flight was running down her spine, and she didn't even know if she wanted to pull him to the bed or shove him out the door and hide. She forced herself to slow down, waited until she could speak evenly.

"I want you to direct me. No more games. I take this seriously, and I thought you did too."

He took a few deep breaths, and she was glad she'd just washed her hair, and didn't smell like sweat.

"If you can't do something, we have to change it." His voice was closer to normal, though low, barely enough to carry.

Pride, more than anything, took her a step back, glaring. She wasn't handicapped; she could do anything they asked her to do. If she couldn't, she'd learn.

"Cut the bullshit, Derek." Her tone wasn't very nice, and he glanced up in surprise. "You know I could have done it."

Was this what he did with Karen? What she wanted, needed? Rebecca had been needy too. She hadn't belonged. Derek still gave her anything. Everything.

"You said you couldn't," was his overly reasonable counter.

He thought so little of her, he was putting her in their category. Or worse, he thought so little of her that he thought she _wanted_to be lumped in with them. That she couldn't do it on her own. He thought she couldn't. They'd spent hundreds of hours together and he didn't know her at all.

Arguments in hallways were frowned upon.

Pulling him out of the way with a hand fisted in his shirt, moving him too easily given their respective sizes, she shut the door. Either because she was properly pissed at him for the first time since Boston, or just because he never looked threatening in her tiny apartment, she felt like they were-

Like they were immediate, maybe. There had been so much space between them even in rehearsals, and now there wasn't.

"Why am I here? If it's just to play bench warmer, I've wasted enough time with you already." She'd meant _wasted enough time with the show_. It didn't occur to her that she might also have meant something else until he thumped back against the wood, jaw clenched.

Oh well, she did mean that too.

She was prepared for anger, or at least rising irritation to match hers, but he swallowed it, more tired than anything, the inverse of how he was in the studio.

"I thought I was right. With Karen."

"And?" she prompted.

He dropped his head back. "I wasn't."

She could read the rising annoyance in the line of his jaw. He never liked explaining himself. Not if he was pushed. She wished she didn't know that. But she did, and so she waited, propping a shoulder against the the divider wall and crossing her arms.

A minute or forever later he leveraged up and walked past her to sit on the enf of her bed. Another forever and he informed the floor, in apathetic monotone: "She was fantastic, in Boston."

_She_could have been fantastic, too.

He barely paused. "And then she wasn't."

Someone would have told her if that was really true. There was no better gossip than informing the supplanted of the supplantee's fall from grace. See the deluge when Karen was fired.

His voice took on a wistful sheen. "We never rehearsed with her, much."

That was something else that pissed her off: Karen barely got by in the ensemble. She could learn something if she wanted to, but needed a crowd of hand-holding to learn and relearn and keep the final bits and pieces straight.

"Theatre is nothing _but_rehearsals," she snapped. If she were in the mood to be charitable, Karen might do a decent job taking over the role from someone else.

Like when she took over Marilyn.

He was nodding, but went on like he was reading from a script. "I couldn't baby her every step of the way. She couldn't do it." He caught her in the very corner of his eye. "You can."

She'd rather have IT than mere professional hardiness. Which she wasn't even getting to use.

She clipped her words. "And what is 'it,' Derek, that I can do and she can't?" It wasn't something she wanted to fight over, she just needed to know if if if. If she was just the easier, albeit less glamorous option. If 'it' was something she could be proud of, or something out of her control. If it was her at all, or anyone vaguely like her would do just as well. It wasn't something you could ask. He was nothing but her Director, but he was sitting in her apartment and this conversation would never leave the room. He wouldn't. She wouldn't. She needed to know where she stood, when everything was already upside down.

Tom said it had been the special performance. But one room was nothing like a stage, with lights and people and life and a full production waiting for their cue.

He was silent. She watched. She just needed one thing. One thing that meant he wanted her.

"She glows," he finally came up with. "People are drawn to her, they watch her, like a goddess, beyond reach. The listen to her under a spell."

Karen was too perfect for the dirt of the stage? Too good even for poor, broken, legendary Marilyn. Derek always had tried to turn one into the other, and in the end he did it the wrong way around. Her hand was on the doorknob when he continued.

"The love her."

Like hell she was going to keep listening to a rapture from the Altar of Karen. "Get out." She flung the door open so fast it hurt when it hit her hand.

Almost as fast he was on his feet. "Dammit Ivy." His voice was hard, sharp. The door slammed back into the frame.

Derek was loud, and sometimes mean, but he was never violent. It scared her, a little, when he blocked her path, herding her against the wall like she was prey.

Before, she'd wanted him to look at her. Now she wanted him to look away. He was pinning her down without touching her, anger or something like it simmering, running tense through his muscles.

She hated that she couldn't take a full breath. "Derek." She hated the fear that spiked the whisper.

"She's never anyone but her pretty little self. No one can touch her," he hissed. "They applaud. They love her."

She tried to slip sideways but he blocked her with an arm, hollow thump on thin wall.

"_She_ is the story."

She pushed futilely at his chest and he leaned his weight forward, his heartbeat almost audible now that she could feel it. It had not escaped her attention that he could do anything to her, and she couldn't stop him. She was also very aware of the fact that even in the moment, she didn't really believe he would.

"Derek," she tried, louder.

"They were all impressed. By her. By her performance. That was it."

And he didn't like that, clearly, and at odds with everything he'd ever said before. He had fits, sometimes, ones no one understood. It made him a lot of things: a good director, feared and hated, respected. He liked it that way. She liked it when she understood the why. She didn't like it when he expected her to understand his every passing fancy.

"Stop. Derek. Please." Through his shirt, he was hot.

One of them was trembling, probably her, while he looked at her like he'd forgotten she was there. Eyes softening tension bleeding breath deepening and stumbling as his head tipped against the wall by her ear.

She left her hand where it was, preventing him from getting closer, or maybe making sure he wouldn't leave.

"She's a pretty thing. She's Marilyn wrapped up in her entourage, and she doesn't want to leave." The words were defeated, tired and lost. This wasn't a Derek she knew either, but it was closer.

"What am I?" she whispered, awaiting judgment.

"I need you," like it hurt. Quickly, before she could respond: "The show needs you. You took," he swallowed, "them with you. You made them have fun. You make them feel." The last breathed out, as if not meant for her ears.

As good a reason as any, she supposed. At least it was something she knew she could do, something the theatre wanted to do.

It was leftover adrenaline, why she still couldn't breathe right.

His first question still echoed in her mind. _What do you want from me?_

"So help me."

He took a sharp breath, pressing in a fraction, his head tilting farther towards her. Asking permission. They'd done this enough, she knew what it was. It wasn't like she hadn't thought about it. That with Karen gone and her snug in the role, they could go back...

They hadn't worked before. They wouldn't work now. They'd been together for a while, but there would always be another Karen. Living as a placeholder until something better came along wasn't enough, she wanted something better, for once.

She turned away. "Direct me." She let her hand drop away.

He pushed off the wall slowly, nodding, not looking at her as he let himself out, lock clicking shut with a tiny scrape.

There was silence. The calm after the storm.

Crawling into bed, she wrapped herself around a pillow and tried to not think. She had the part, and all she could do was show up Monday and do her job. The best she could. Anything else was beyond her control.

It wasn't cold but she shivered, cocooned in her blanket. Monday would prove if he could do it. This had been the best confrontation she could expect, if not the best scene she had dreamed.

Life was always messier, more painful, less satisfying than fantasy. There weren't any RomCom reveals, where it had all been a misunderstanding, the guy gets the girl and the girl gets the guy. Derek really had seen everything in Karen, and still saw it. He just needed less than she was. Or he wasn't enough for her. Even for Karen, he couldn't soften that far, not for that long. That was something. He hadn't changed for _her_ either.

And Derek still wanted her, Ivy Lynn. That was one bright spot which could have faded with all the others. Maybe he expected to have her back, she knew his reputation, his sociopathic tendencies. She'd seen them. She'd rarely dreamed about letting him back into her bed, but had run though scenarios where she could dramatically point out all the ways he'd done nothing but use her before shoving him away and stalking off with a Marilyn swing to her hips.

Or let him kiss her, once, just enough to pretend she'd forgotten before slipping away and smirking a "goodbye" they'd never had. Leave him wanting. They never _had_ had a proper goodbye, just a series of half-avoidances.

He was supposed to beg, to presume, to offer lame excuses and deny that anyone else had ever meant anything to him.

He wasn't supposed to say all the wrong things, sing the praises of the woman she hated most, yell at her and wrap around her as if he'd finally lost control, scare her, send her head spinning heart tripping aching wondering what would have happened if...

If she hadn't turned away. If he'd wanted her enough to ask more than once. To fight for her, no one fought for her, even if it was only with her bitter half.

She wasn't supposed to want him, after everything.

And yet, she did. A little. In the moment he went from hard to soft. Those moments were theirs.

She fell asleep wondering how many other women believed exactly the same thing.


	6. I guess that I don't need that though

_A/N - I know exceptionally little about Broadway, and generally I'm happy to play it fast and loose. But on those occasions where I need a detail to be right, or want to pilfer background information, or just talk things out, there are some people I hit up and deserve credit for the good: idbeinthefollies, mmmelpomene, Broadway Babe WA, the BAMFs at the TWOP boards, and pretty much everyone I've ever talked with. Thank you!_

* * *

Monday he yelled. At everyone.

There were eyerolls and mutterings, it had been too good to last. Derek was back off meds, or his dominant personality was back in control. Those were the most popular opinions. Ivy didn't say anything. She smiled through the brash commands "Again," "_F__ocus. _ Again" and on the third try she kept her hips high and stuck the landing, tipping neatly back into waiting arms.

Derek gave her the tiniest hint of a grin before moving them on.

The whole week was harder, it was always going to be. It was mostly choreography she barely knew, started and stopped without breaks to orient her before the music started back up or Josh clapped out the beats. The ensemble had been there every step of the way, and when her steps faltered she could see her missed positions and the line of boredom as they reset again. And again.

It wasn't that she was unreasonably slow, or a trainwreck. She just wasn't as fast or as perfect as she wanted to be.

"For God's sake Ivy, you're not waiting for a bus." Derek's shout bounced throughout the room and Ivy froze. It was the first time he'd been properly derisive, and while she'd been waiting for it, she hadn't been ready for it.

He was as still as she was, within the usual hubub, pen poised over a page.

She raised her eyebrows innocently, and walked quietly back to her mark. The next run, she moved faster.

By Friday she was doing better, nights of mentally running through her notes paying off, her body piecing together combinations into a fluid whole. She wasn't ready to carry the production, but she was getting there, and "there" was months away.

She cashed in her rainchecks when Linda called the day.

They went to their favourite bar, her and Sam, Bobby, Jessica and Dennis, and crowded around a table meant for two. "The Fringe," Dennis called them, haunting the drunken nights before and after civilian's civilized hours. If you kept busy, you could forget anyone else roamed the streets, shadows existing only to occupy seats, a faceless audience beyond the living glare of the stage lights.

"Can you believe Derek?" Jessica asked with the second round.

"No!" Bobby was scanning the crowd. "But did anyone really think he'd changed?" He waved to someone like he was landing a plane.

Ivy took a sip from her first mug. Lately, she hadn't been holding her alcohol too well. "He wasn't that different last week."

The table played eyeball ping-pong before resting on her self-conscious confusion.

"It wasn't just last week," Dennis whispered by her ear.

Sam took over. "He's been really nice with Karen, ever since-"

"Since she got Understudy, remember?"

"Not at first."

"But after that."

They bickered over the details. Ivy drank.

"Until he cracked."

"You could tell he was going to blow."

"Karen couldn't."

"Would you?"

Ivy sliced into her second drink, watching Sam manage to avoid her until she felt sufficiently brave to lean into his personal space with:

"You told me he was making her life _hell_."

"I said we thought he was going crazy. And Darth Derek being nice?" Sam had a point. "It's not like you should worry about it, whatever it was didn't last. You have the part, remember?" Another fair point.

It still wasn't fair. Derek had been nice to her and she'd hated it, but that was because they couldn't get anything done. She'd seen the changes, knew what the show had looked like in Boston. Derek had been able to work with Karen, and do it nicely. No matter what he said. She wondered what other things he'd done with Karen, nicely and easily and worshiping her all the while.

When she finished her drink, she stole Dennis'.

A night out with her friends, the lead in a new musical, and a sale at TJ Maxx all weekend. There was everything to celebrate.

"Have you heard about Karen?"

"No, what?"

"You won't believe."

"Ivy, you'll love this. She won't be anywhere _near_ Bombshell until it goes up." Bobby glanced gleefully up from his phone, ignoring a swat from Jessica, who was leaning over his shoulder.

That was promising. Especially if it was because Iowa was giving up and finally going back to her adoring cornfields.

"She got Mamma Mia! Standby for Sophie, the West End production. She's leaving this weekend."

"That soon?"

"Think that's why she left Bombshell?"

"For a standby?"

"Maybe Derek was jealous."

"Arthur McCluster saw her in Boston. Apparently he scooped her up when he heard she was free."

Texts were rolling in. There was a fine line between pride, excitement, and bragging. "Humblebragging," a blog she'd read had labeled it.

Even getting fired only turned into an amazing opportunity for _her_. Standby was nothing on the lead, but it was nothing to sneeze at: a gateway to the top, especially when someone had their eye on you.

Ivy bought the next round.

* * *

A good bit of Saturday was lost to a bad hangover. Forget the beer, there had been shots hiding in there somewhere. Probably in the beer. Her teeth hurt. Who the hell decided it was a good idea to drop an unrestrained shot glass into an innocent-looking pint?

But by Monday she had three new dresses, a new pair of killer heels, and life was looking up. So Karen had a great new job, one thousands of girls would kill for. One she hadn't worked for. So what if she was jealous? Karen was gone, Marilyn was hers, and she couldn't keep worrying about things she had no control over. She always said that, she always worried, but she'd read a book during her down period that had her resolved to mean it. This was her fresh start.

By Thursday she'd placed 10,000 breaths, danced 1,000 ways, missed 100 notes and received maybe 10 signs of approval. A good week so far.

The afternoon was for scene work. They'd been snagging an hour here and an hour there, a couple of working lunches or early mornings. They'd covered most of it, and now it was time to wrestle with the more emotional scenes.

Ivy cried and ran away, ran back to cry and run, until DiMaggio was yelling, over and over, each pulling out what exactly they were feeling at every moment.

Derek always seemed to know what it was. Funny, since his own emotional range was vastly smaller than normal. But he let them figure it out on their own, with nudges and suggestions and only the periodic smack of his hand on the tabletop. A rare hour of patience, before blocking would hold them to perfection once again.

The last scene they turned to was one she knew, relatively unchanged from the start. Probably why it had been tacked on to the end of the schedule; the emotional drive was from her, DiMaggio playing part of the audience.

Derek had approved of her reading the very first time. Her fingernail engraved the pages. He'd liked it a lot, she'd thought, until she watched him watch Karen play it. Ivy hadn't thought Karen did nearly as well. Though certain inflections were suspiciously familiar.

Stop.

Don't worry about things you can't control.

"Ivy?"

"Ivy!"

A tap on her arm roused her just as the shout made her start.

"Page 49, if you don't mind." Heavy but not cutting. They were all getting tired.

To make up for her lapse she watched every beat, but relaxed her hold on the words to let raw emotion bleed through.

"What is it?" DiMaggio asked. "Why can't you just let it go, let _them_ go, and stay here with me?"

"They say I'm crazy," whispering didn't work on stage, but brittleness came from the same place. "They say I'm crazy because I want things." Everyone wanted things, not just Marilyn. Why did no one admit how much? "But the things I want..." Maybe that was it. She could never want what she was supposed to want. Ivy thought of her mother, other relationships haunting the blurred edges and spinning more as active plea than resigned loss. "I want love." Love wasn't for the stars. Not that kind of love, anyway, and the two were nothing like the same. "I don't want... Well. A sex object is a thing." A slave, even if from afar. Miles or decades. "Who would want to be a thing?" What we want and what we are...

She blotted her mouth with the back of her hand, covering a pause longer than she anticipated before drifting watery eyes back up to look at DiMaggio.

He was staring at her, but he wasn't DiMaggio. Brandon clapped, light but sincere.

She smiled into her shrugged shoulder, biting her lip. He hadn't been expecting a fleshed out reading, he didn't know she'd worked on it before.

Trying to maintain the modestly professional, rather than girlishly proud, she spun in her chair to find out where Derek wanted them to start from next.

He was staring at her too. When he was intent he usually leaned forwards, as far as he could. Now he was stretched back, lounging and relaxed, except she was having trouble remembering how to breath and he wasn't doing anything but boring into her with unreadable black eyes.

And she was still too open from the scene, she couldn't look away and she couldn't put up any walls. She was willing to glare back and forth all day long, if she had to. This was too one-sided.

He scared her, but not because-

"That's the day" Linda cut in, quietly. Pretending to not look at them, by the way her head was purposefully buried in her book.

It was the excuse she needed to break away. When she looked back, Derek was stowing his laptop.

It wasn't until she was on the street that she realized it was only ten-to.

She was still shaking a little when she got home and threw herself under a scalding spray. She was hotter inside. She wanted him.

He wanted her.

Her underwear drawer presented choices, and she waffled. They were nothing but Director and Actress, the way she wanted it. She didn't want to fall into the trap of becoming his convenience-lay again. Convenience-girlfriend, she had to accede. Apart from rough moments, they'd been too easily _more_ to be described as less, or to be real. Reliable sex and shop talk when most other people would be offended.

She was almost sure. She couldn't be sure of anything, anymore.

Black silk and lace cool against her skin, making her look even paler than she was. A light robe was already across her shoulders before she changed her mind, picking up old leggings and a sloppily oversized t-shirt.

There were her options. She couldn't know what she wanted until she knew if she needed to make a choice.

She would probably do the wrong thing. She always did. Her head knew but her heart led and her gut hoped. And it all sounded so very very possible until... It could be hard to tell which way more danger lay.

A lazy read through of the script and a movie later, her nerves were so tired of being so tense even a thorough stretch couldn't loosen them and she couldn't pay attention to much more than her disappointment.

She'd been sure, cautiously sure, that Derek would turn up. Last week she'd said no, but earlier, earlier he'd been looking at her as if he'd take her right there if there hadn't been a crowd. She didn't think she'd said no. She hadn't even wanted to, exactly.

She wanted him to think about her after rehearsal. Find her even though he wasn't supposed to. Prove she was right, when she thought she knew him well enough to predict what he'd do. Because that was where they'd started, over that scene over their dedication, fascination, adoration of the theatre. Everything else had gone to hell but that would always be there.

And she missed him.

Of course they couldn't pick up where they'd left off, but this was Broadway: there was always room to start over, change it up. They'd always been good at sex. She smiled into her knees. They might even make okay friends, her own private doorway into the other side of the production. She had talents beyond the stage proper.

It was after midnight, she was testing the dryness of a new colour toenail polish when there was a knock on her door.

He was already braced on the jam, tracking her. Down her shirt to her toes, up to her undone hair.

She fidgeted, over her clothes or what was underneath them. Both maybe. He never looked frumpy, and never looked like he cared, lean and striking even when he was rumpled, scotch cologne tickling her nose. But he didn't get drunk and he wasn't drunk now. Style, not substance.

She'd promised herself she'd know when – if – it happened. Tom would be appalled and her mother would probably approve and Sam would non-judgmentally make her judge herself and Eileen would sigh or want to fire her for messing up the plan but he _had_ been hers, she thought she'd be happier, the show wouldn't be hurt, and she knew they could still work together as long as-

He watched as she slid her palms up his chest, to disappear behind his neck and trail over his ear as she stood up on tippy toe to taste the drinks off his tongue. He opened his mouth, letting her in, but his passivity was starting to worry her until he lined her jaw with his hands, cupped her face like she was fragile and kissed her back.

They were blindly making their way towards the bed when she stumbled. He caught at her hip to steady her, running his fingers up and down, and she remembered, jerking her head to the side.

They'd shown her to make her feel better. Pictures Dennis had taken in Boston: Derek whispering in Karen's ear as she laughed, holding her waist, her hips, leaning over her shoulder with playful suggestion...

He was running his thumb over her cheek.

Stop.

Don't worry about things you can't control.

The pictures were proof that Derek had fired Karen anyway, too. That she wasn't the only one. That Karen wasn't magically untouchable. That she wasn't worse. They shouldn't mean anything else. Nothing had changed. It's not like she didn't know what he thought of- he'd told her himself, while sitting right here, somewhere...

It's not like she'd expected him to not sleep with anyone else, not after they were over. It wasn't like she hadn't – _wasn't_ – sort of seeing other people too. He still wanted her. She still wanted him.

But she didn't want... Gentleness. Anything _she_ had had. Which would be the only thing _she_ would deserve, or permit.

An hours worth of angsting at fluttering heartbeat speed and her mouth was back under his before he could read her. Hands massaging over his shoulders down his arms to tear his hands off her cheeks and land them lower on her body. Karen didn't seem the type to be aggressive.

Or maybe she was, behind closed doors, and that was pa-

Stop.

Nipping at his tongue, pressing herself up and in pulling even closer with nails digging into his back before he took the hint and crushed her to his chest. She'd lost track of where they were, but he obviously hadn't. One arm across her back, other hand hooked under her thigh, he lifted and spun her, depositing her onto the bed before landing over her, specifically not touching her, too far away for what she wanted.

He dropped under her urging, pinning her between his body and the mattress. Too close for anything but some rough grinding, and she wrapped her legs around his. She was already wet, the heavy denim crotch of his pants enticingly close. She bit him on the neck and he responded sluggishly.

He wasn't even hard. She wasn't offended. He was a little drunk, and she didn't usually jump him.

Hot breath wandered across her cheek to overflow her ear, and she pulled his hair to get his mouth back on hers.

Not to mention the thing she'd tactfully never mentioned. Derek was getting older, and she suspected that his tendency towards lengthy foreplay was only partly because he liked it and wanted her to like it. And more because he sometimes had trouble getting it up .

She slipped a hand under his waistband, gauging the effect as she ran her nails over his ass with varying pressure. It was exciting again, not knowing and wanting to find out. Hitch of breath or tiny flinch; he couldn't hide, and there was truth in that. Things she was learning about him now that she never knew before. Ever since they broke up.

Her goal was less cautious, straightforward fun sex. She didn't want him to do anything he didn't want to do, out of guilt (nothing would be worse) or do anything to him he didn't like (truth told she had some fantasies along this line...) She might want to do this again. Probably would want to. Likely would get to, if having the thought wouldn't jinx it.

He didn't like a hard edge of pain. But light scratching made him buck his hips sharply against her.

A new pattern, not a finale.

… How many people would laugh at the thought of Derek letting himself be used?

… What were the chances he was playing her, right now, to get a better performance?

… Would it matter?

Most. Middling. Not really.

She didn't know why he thought he was there. Even she doubted it was just about sex, or bedding his leading ladies.

He was pushing himself up, tugging at her shirt, and she applauded his initiative. Once she was free, and he was distractedly busy with her corset, she followed a meandering path over his muscles, belt to shoulders, taking his shirt with her.

Not that it was her, necessarily. Just want she represented. Some things were so much clearer when he was holding her down by the hips, kissing his way around her decolletage. What he'd say if he knew...

The problem with Derek was that he made you doubt everything. Then there'd come a point when you stopped caring. It had started for her, maybe forever ago, but she felt it first when he fired her for the second time. An empty shell around the place where she should have been hurt, and angry, and disappointed and waiting for him to say something that might make it better.

Then tonight, when he tried to kiss her like nothing had happened. It had. But it was like he didn't even know it, it wouldn't even occur to him to be any other way. If he'd been lying or faking or even over-confident she could deal with him as yet another jerk. The best you could say for Derek, he was a jerk in his own league. Life for him really was that simple, laid out in little tableaus.

She abraded her fingers on his stubble, rubbing small circles into his jaw for the tingle when she played with his hairline. He was kissing a path along her collar bone, up the side of her neck where he knew she liked it. When he got to her chin she caught his mouth.

He was never dead when he kissed, it was one place he was always him. If you learned to read him, like braille. He wasn't Darth Derek. Or Insane. Or a Genius Director. He was just a guy, who cared more about his work than anything else, and could major insensitive jackass about anything, anyone, in his way.

She could relate.

A few pokes and he rolled over. They got their pants off that way, before Ivy settled on top, pretending to ride him without touching, giving a show.

She still liked him, even when she hated him. It was easier to like him when Bombshell was coming together. There were things they understood about each other, even when they didn't. A good thing and a bad thing, but it was there between them anyway.

His nipples were sensitive. She played with them like a cat. The way they'd always done this before, she'd never even thought to try.

Derek had slept around, that was old news. He wasn't shy. But there'd been times all throughout their relationship which made more sense in retrospect, all lined up. Times when he was too carefully casual or strangely uncertain or quiet when there was no reason to be.

If he didn't pull her hips down in a minute she was going to move things along in a different way.

She was pretty sure she knew why he was trying to talk to her weeks ago. She felt a little badly about her reaction, a little confused over whether he'd forgotten about it or not. Sometimes she thought things could hurt him and stick around. Sometimes she thought at best, he thought it was funny.

It wasn't her, so much, but what they'd had. Strangely good but weirdly doomed, he couldn't explain it any more than she could. And like a bit of choreography that was never quite right, he couldn't let it go until he understood.

Time's up.

Unfortunately, relationships weren't something you could understand, plan or control. She'd learned that more than once. That made it a little easier, for her, when it all went to hell.

It was a little easier when he tried to kiss her, the other night. It was much easier when he was staring at her earlier like she was the only thing in the world. Almost perfect, now, as he rolled up against her hand planted on his sternum as she fished a condom out of her nightstand. There were many kinds of hell.

This was one of the nicer ones. They were over, brutally so, but he was in her bed, wanted to be and wanted her. She brushed her fingers along the underside of his cock as she rolled on the rubber, squeezed and massaged up and down, testing if he was hard enough, every movement echoed by his hands on her thighs. He lost the rhythm when she stroked him, and he tried to flip her over without actually moving her.

She obliged.

Losing him had hurt. She'd liked him a lot. But the problem was always that someone else got him. Someone who didn't have to earn it the way she had. He gave himself away to everyone else, and threw her away. Even though she was the one he kept waking up next to. She'd given him a key, he'd spent so much time at her place. She did it because it made life easier, and apparently it made her easier too.

He pushed in faster and harder, but neither fast nor hard enough. She gasped into his ear and rocked upwards.

Guys wanted the drama, the chase, especially men like Derek. She probably had more chance of keeping him like this, panting and confused, than she ever had before.

That was very callous of her. Mother's daughter at last.

She met him thrust for thrust, forcing him to change his angle when she changed position to gain leverage.

He might be back just because nothing else had worked out. There was power in that. If she didn't expect too much. If she didn't want more than she could have. That was one good thing, for what it was worth. She was so used to disappointment, she usually saw it coming before it could catch her unawares. There were things she could have, if she wasn't too proud. He was a powerful Director. He owed her.

She came, briefly faltering in her rhythm until she regrouped, pulling him after her.

She had made very critical decisions about her life very early on. Broadway was her life. It was everything she was, and in everything she would ever be. Right now, all she wanted to have time for was Bombshell.

He was becoming erratic, temple pressed against hers. Asking permission.

Bombshell and sex.

She pressed her mouth behind his ear as he came, instead, scraped her teeth gently over his earlobe.

Everyone wanted love. She found hers in the theatre, in her friends, in the ebb and flow of the city. In the pursuit of stardom. Anything else – well, she was going in with her eyes open. Marilyn hadn't. Maybe.

When he collapsed next to her she didn't roll over. She'd always tried so hard, too hard, to be everything.

She didn't know what Derek was after, but she was pretty sure he didn't know either. It wouldn't hurt him to deal with a little role reversal. There was no safety in their line of work.

He propped himself up when she didn't, studying her face while she studied her ceiling and he traced and retraced lines up and down her arm.

She'd never felt like she had more power than him before. He always had the first question or the last decision or just a stronger belief he was right.

She threaded her fingers through his and squeezed, kissing his knuckles in case he misinterpreted the new routine as a permanent brush off.

He only had power she gave him. She hadn't slept with him because he was the Director, no matter what anyone thought. And he hadn't given her the role because she did. Marilyn had done the same thing, fall into men without looking back. And never gotten anything out of them at all. Ivy had been there. She could call it back when she needed it. Everything was fodder for an actress.

He left her slowly, retiring to the bathroom.

She didn't have to be Marilyn. If she was going to lay out her heart, it would be for someone she wanted to risk it for.

That had never been Derek. For a while she'd thought that maybe... Well, he'd taken a chunk out of it anyway.

He finished dressing in silence, sitting on the edge of the bed by her knees.

She didn't actually know what she was doing. She never had. Maybe she was crazy, strapped to a bed in a mental ward dreaming this all up. Or maybe – he made her doubt yet – maybe she was still so wrong about him, herself, them and even how the world worked, and everything would implode yet again.

Her life. Welcome to it.

She expected him to walk out, but he leaned over, kissing her cheek before he went.

Or she was constructing an elaborate story to bury the central, weak reason she was doing this. Hope. The same tiny, burning kernel that had carried her through the last decade. It wasn't like he was the only guy she'd dated. She'd even lived with a couple. But there was something between them, and she wanted it almost as much as she wanted Broadway. If it was one thing, however small, _no one_ else could have or understand.

It wasn't something she'd ever get. But if she did – if she did it was something not out of her way. It was something she could only get through Broadway, and only have within it. She'd never have to choose. Because her life always came down to the same decision: Broadway, or something else.

Her cheek was cool where a kiss worth of moisture was evaporating.

Screw it. Whatever they'd had was mostly ruined for her. There was nothing romantic about it anymore, not even around the edges. Now she wanted to see if they could be anything else, where she wasn't always waiting for the other shoe to drop.. You don't let go of what you want, just because it gets hard.

She didn't shower, turned over and drifted to sleep with his smell still on her, the memory of the press of his body still securing her down. It was just like Marilyn. Turning down the part hurt no one but her, any small satisfaction wouldn't last. Derek and Bombshell would always be linked, for her. She could fend him off, but why? She wanted him, he wanted her, and Bombshell made more sense when they were together.

Another showmance.

Maybe that was it.

She stretched into a more comfortable position.

Before, she'd never really seen an endpoint for them. Something hazy, something that would never work, beyond the show opening. Now she knew they would exist as long as they worked together every day. It really didn't matter what had come before. She was one in a chain, so was he. But linked to a series of shows. There _was_ no point in worrying about what had come before. They were in the theatre, and the theatre waited for no one.

* * *

_Nelly - Aw, thanks! And you make me happy by using "bloody" as a modifier. :D_


	7. you didn't have to cut me off

Over the next few weeks, life settled into patterns. Broad ones: wake up, go to rehearsal. Leave rehearsal, go home. Shower, read through the next day's scenes and numbers, go to sleep.

Narrow ones: once rehearsals stopped needing to wait for her to catch up, she carefully stayed one step ahead. Which was necessary: schedules for the day were never finalized until the day was over, working through and around adjustments as new actors and actresses came and went, new characters and scenes trickling in every few days as Tom and Julia sat watching only long enough to rush home and flesh out new, better ideas. Sometimes they took old ideas with them, sometimes they brought them back.

Whenever they weren't navigating the realities of developing a finished show they'd pin down more and more of the blocking and choreography. Derek would outline his plan, then let them play with it, picking out what he wanted then imposing his will. Sometimes he imposed quite forcefully.

Usually he didn't like what she did - not the first time at least - but sometimes his eyebrows raised, and he'd nod for Linda to note it down. Sometimes he hated what she did, and told her why, and sometimes she had to tell herself to Stop, before she started to cry or throw one of the new props at his head.

Once or twice she kept doing it anyway because she knew he was wrong, and she liked seeing him strain for control. He was back to his old self, but not quite. The extremes were tempered, a hair, rehearsals all the smoother for it.

And he wouldn't yell when she was directly defying him. Maybe he never would have, she never used to try. Maybe that had been her problem. Karen had talked back, all the time once she had the part. With less justification, through that might be the ensemble trying to make her feel better. She didn't think it was.

Maybe it was easier for him; he had one Marilyn, more time, less stress amongst the prod staff. Even Tom had been less vocally opposed to him recently. Ivy certainly felt less stressed. It was hard, the hours were long, she still panicked full out at least twice a week, and spent time with ice and honeyed tea every night, but after what had happened before – nothing could be that bad again.

And with her or not, the show was changing. She could feel it. Turn by phrase, note by cue, the heavier moments grew heavier, pure innocence against bleak loss, the public Marilyn floating someplace in between, or maybe she was riding overtop.

Innocence had never been her strength, she knew that. It was all the worse coming off Karen's portrayal, which had been nothing but naivety. And heartbreak, it seemed. One betrayal from a boyfriend equaling a lifetime of-

Stop.

Don't think about things you can't control.

They were working the top of the show, most of the cast ranging along the walls or chatting out in the halls. Let Me Be Your Star begged for a belt; she'd always done it that way before. But it shouldn't be, she agreed, sitting with Tom over the break. It was a moment of transition, of hope. Norma Jean breaking free, dreaming Marilyn into existence, leaving pain behind before her new identity would begin to suffocate her.

Tom clapped enthusiastically, but she didn't have to look at his face to know she'd missed the mark. After a second aborted attempt she was pacing in front of the piano under the Shadow Selves gazes, trying to figure out what it _felt_like. Knowing she didn't have it in her. The third was worse yet.

There was too much steel and drive in her own associations. She'd never, not since she could remember, been that lost and directionless. Maybe she could have figured it out before, when she had the same shot at the role as everyone else, rise or stay where she was. Now all she could see were the heights out of reach, the chasm all around, the people, even here, who were happy to push her down without even telling her why, just that she didn't have...

Derek cut in on her thoughts. "Right. Early lunch."

She propped herself on a chair, sipping at her water and worrying over notes as the remaining cast meandered out in clumps.

"I'm hardly going to toss her out the window." Derek's sarcasm could carry though any room. "She can take care of herself."

Right there, that was the problem. All she'd ever done, since she was 17, was take care of herself. Even before that, no one took her to rehearsals, auditions, dance classes, voice lessons, got her into an acting program at the local college, help her live her dream. When she started at age 7 she arranged rides from her friend's mothers, and begged her father for a bike. Leigh allowed it if she could pretend to not see.

Marilyn had always, _always_had help. Sure, she was tossed around for a while, but family sometimes took her in, she was married off to keep her safe, she wasn't working in a non-glamorous job for long before being "discovered" by photographers... Sure some of the men weren't very nice, she had always wanted more. Yes she was active and tried to break free and yet. There was always an "and yet."

And yet that was a Marilyn she could almost understand, but never quite the Marilyn she was supposed to be.

At least a handful of people tended to eat in the space - it was always open over lunch - so she didn't look up to notice how empty it was until Tom put his hand on her shoulder.

"I'll be right downstairs. Are you going to be alright?"

She blinked back frustrated tears. "Of course," and smiled. Everyone had songs, scenes they wrestled with.

Except what he actually meant, she realized as Derek crossed the room, was whether she'd be okay alone with Derek.

They'd still never worked one on one, with less than several people or several feet between them.

Tom didn't know they-

They'd fallen into a pattern too. Two or three times a week they'd catch each others eye during a last run, or while packing up or heading out the door, and he'd be at her door later in the evening. Usually when the day had been rougher than normal. Sometimes when they'd had a breakthrough, some scene or song magically falling into place.

Derek thought he never lied. She didn't lie either, not unless she specifically meant to. He never _had_ been that good in bed. It wasn't that he was _bad_, as his male pride had taken it. He was patient and paid attention and certainly knew what he was doing. Probably some woman would never have a complaint at all.

The first few times – and his one night stands and show affairs would be impressed – were a little bit perfect, even before they learned each others bodies. Kissing and touching and slow teasing. Based on a few trashy paperbacks floating around the dressing rooms for those with nothing else to do, it was very romantic, the long gentle foreplay and respectful transitions.

There were even exciting moments, like when he'd shown up after that Heaven on Earth show...

She wasn't adverse to it, far from it. But she liked to operate in more than one gear. Hell, even when she was on top he'd had her smooth and vanilla.

But there were a lot of things they never talked about, and sex had been one.

Now there was still plenty of kissing, but they rarely started with the mouth and never ended there. It wasn't kinky or painful, just bodies first. Just sex.

He was still generally tentative, waiting for her to make the first moves, and rarely going far enough even when she encouraged him. In a way it was endearing, like playing with a virgin. In a way it was frustrating, because he was anything but, and after the first few nights she was left wondering if he was making her work this hard because he thought she _wanted_to boss him around. Maybe she did.

Or maybe he'd always wanted to give up control. Who the hell knew?

How sex could possibly help at this moment, she wasn't sure, except to know that she wouldn't go along with it.

"Ready to try it again?" His voice was light, as was his proffered hand under hers as he led her to the center of the room, guiding her around until she faced the windows.

They were always facing the mirrors, unless they were at the piano or dusting the fringes watching others work. It made her nervous, seeing nothing but the skyline in front of her. When she peeked over her shoulder he was setting up a song on the iPod attached to the small stereo used when the pianist wasn't there, or wasn't enough.

She turned halfway again, brow furrowed, when the music started, and it wasn't the opener.

"Go on." He waved her back around. "You know it."

She'd always felt like the song was for her. The opening notes of Second Hand White Baby Grand spilled out naturally, the way they had before. Her shoulders were set for corrections but they never came. There was innocence in it, she supposed, the lyrics and how they flowed through the melody. But it was a slow, broken innocence, looking backwards at itself more than anything. A song from so much later in Marilyn's life.

The last few words shook, as he was walked up behind her, and she managed to not flinch or turn when he rested his knuckles on her hips. All she'd see would be shoulder anyway.

"It's the same part of Marilyn," he murmured into the silence by her ear. "Before she knew how hard life is." He leaned closer, until she could feel the brush of material against her bare shoulder blades. "Before she knew she could never escape."

She held her breath, bobbing her head.

"Good girl." He ran his hands up her sides, confusing contrast to the impersonal smile in his words. "Do it like that."

The sky was in front of her. They rarely looked back at it, always at themselves, the world outside a backdrop in a reflection. She held on to what she was feeling, opened her chest as if she was ready to fly out without fear. She had no fear. As if what she had to offer was new, maybe a little dented, but beautiful and ready to become whole.

Music started again and she stumbled her way though the lyrics, finding new phrasings and overshooting a few notes when she sang wider, farther back in her mouth, higher in her chest.

Derek stayed quiet, and she appreciated that. Only a low "Again?" when the song ended, and then she beat him to it with "Again, please," before the next round was entirely over. She didn't have it yet, but she could get it. She could remember.

They ran it again when everyone came back from lunch. This time when Tom clapped, he meant it. Ivy wasn't sure whether he was more proud of her, or of Derek.

* * *

There were still two months until Broadway, long enough to feel miles away. There were only three weeks until a full preview for investors and VIPs; a last taste of what the final product would be.

Energy was ramping up, jokes smothered down for after-rehearsal drinks. With Broadway all but a sure thing, almost no one was still in regular shows. There wasn't time. Calls were earlier and nights longer, padded out with costume fittings and then alterations, smaller pieces of set and props moving in and out to make sure they would function.

Ivy had the worst of it, as the star. Almost nothing fit, either needing to be taken up or let out, usually both, and every time Derek passed by it was another command for the costume department, and highly backhanded compliments about her body. She didn't take is personally – she was happy with who she was – but the barrage of "short," "curvy," "larger," and "shape" rattled off so clinically had her dreaming of being stretched out 6 inches, tall and tiny, fullness created only by choice.

Together, all the cast and the crew, they made it start working. Cogs and gears interlocking. They were all professionals, it was what they did. As things began pulling together, one glaring issue stood out: they'd never worked Diamond, even though it had never officially been cut.

For a week she hadn't seen him outside rehearsals. He was avoiding her eye, leaving quickly or tying himself up in conversations or, more often, one-sided arguments. Even when they were leaving at the same time, and he was holding the door for her, he wouldn't look at her. It wasn't personal, she didn't think. He was showing up mornings edgier and crankier, overly dismissive or overly critical. Sometimes unshowered and wearing the same clothes as the day before; you could tell if you knew his closet. He was up late working every night, maybe all night. Whenever he was stuck, that was what he did.

The temptation was there to see if he would still make time for her, if she showed up at his door. As his star, he almost had to. Only she didn't want to try, in case one or both of them expected her to end up sitting on the bed with him while he stared at the pages, talking it through.

Worse, because it _was_something she missed. Not even so much spending the time with him, holding the glow of being allowed, invited to watch him at his most vulnerably uncertain. Theatre was who she was, the entirety of it. She loved being there as the disparate pieces came together, helping them, here and there, find the perfect fit.

But it wasn't who they were now, if it had ever been who they were then.

She still loved watching him work, even if it was only the surface waves buckling up in rehearsals.

She knew what the problem was, but they were all feeling the effects as his critiques became louder and harsher and made less and less sense. He was changing choreography without giving them time to practice, expecting costume changes they wouldn't be able to set until they were in the space, and even picking fights with Josh and Linda – the only two people who usually escaped his wrath.

It got worse as the week wore on, until they were all dreaming of a light weekend and he ended a run of the USO number leaning heavily on the table, shouting about a slurred line when she'd tripped over Dennis – her fault, - and choreography near the end. Not that she'd messed it up, as far as she could tell, but that she'd done it at all.

It was what he'd told her to do the last time. It was in her book. By the frantic flipping, it was in Linda's as well.

She would have run out crying if he hadn't glared at her for an extra second, then stalked out himself.

"Let's call it a day." Linda's practical tone had enough authority behind it to be followed, even though there was still more than an hour left on the day, and when Derek came back to find everyone gone-

Stop.

Coffee with Jessica, cathartic denunciation of Derek's mental state, distracted laughter over the latest Spiderman fiasco, and she was still too upset to be alone. A week's worth of tension tugged her shoulders, but she was too sick of the daily drama and tap dance of half-truths to spend the evening with anyone she knew. She didn't want to talk about it. Any of it.

She called Peter.

They'd fallen into a pattern too. It was like she was living two lives: Marilyn and Derek during the week, Peter on the weekends, whenever their schedules lined up. But they always made plans in advance, and she was vaguely aware that by calling, she was taking their relationship up a very small notch to a new level of... _something_.

"Ivy, hey!"

"Hi." It was hard to not smile around him, even over the phone. They laughed a lot, all kinds of laughter over all sorts of things. It was what she liked most about him.

"How are rehearsals going? You don't have to cancel tomorrow, do you?"

They were meeting up Sunday afternoon, activity TBA, in celebration of her last free day until the previews were over. She'd almost forgotten.

"No. It's just been a long, long week. I was wondering if you were free to do something?" She felt stupid asking.

"A friend of mine's throwing a party, I was going to go," he said cautiously. "But if you'd rather stay in, we can order in-"

"A party sounds nice." Maybe it would be too much, but being in a crowd who didn't know her, who wouldn't expect anything or ask _those_ questions, who wouldn't have the latest gossip on anyone she knew, that was exactly what she craved.

"Great! Everyone's the strange, crazy but completely non-violent artsy type. Like me, I promise, only more interesting. They'll love you." She pictured his poor efforts to restrain a smile, faux seriousness taking the edge off casual self-deprecation.

She nodded, smiling herself, before remembering he couldn't see her.

An hour later he picked her up, and they had a leisurely dinner at his favourite diner, which had become her favourite diner too. He'd been appropriately appreciative of the dress she'd chosen: fancy enough to pass as dressed up, but tailored for casual citywear. That was another thing he was good at: noticing without leering. A lot like a gay guy, only, she had cause to know, definitely not gay. It was the artist in him.

As it turned out, the people milling throughout the abandoned warehouse wouldn't have cared what she came in. In a good way. They were nice and unrestrained, and while they had their own brand of cattiness, Ivy was an outsider, and barely felt it.

A few of them studied her like a new toy, fascinated by parts of her life she'd forgotten were great. At least in retrospect. Her first weeks with Chicago, tales of stage traumas (mostly not hers), a demonstration of basic dance steps while untrained feet mimicked her the way she had mimicked her teacher as a child. There was even an impromptu medley with Rachel, who was a decent alto, and Fern, who may or may not have been trying to sing that off-key.

She liked them a lot.

"And they _loved_ you," Peter reassured as they walked down the street. It was a little after midnight, still early, but she had afternoon call and wanted to squeeze in a voice lesson and run some errands beforehand.

The mayhem of the city made it impractical to walk a girl to her door, _she_ certainly never expected it unless the guy was expecting to follow her inside. But Peter deposited her neatly at the subway station; the next best thing.

"So are we still on for," he checked his watch, "tomorrow? Or have I scared you off?" He leaned too casually on the railing as they waited for the train. Average height was still tall next to her, and with a lean athletic build, she'd told him once he could pass for a dancer himself. If only he had rhythm.

Except his hair was too long, always almost covering hazel eyes, until it was shoved briefly out of the way.

She gave him a quick kiss, because she wanted to.

"What did you have in mind?"

"You can say no." He picked up her hand, manipulating her fingers. "But you know how I have a show coming up?"

She did. It was technically an amateur type thing, but he'd been handpicked and it was at the MET. Art critics always went, even if they rarely liked. It was a pretty bid deal. More like massive, really, only Peter liked to play nonchalant. Less disappointment, Ivy figured, if things didn't work out.

"I hadn't settled on a theme, but you've got me thinking movement, dancing, Degas only updated." His eyes always brightened when he talked about his work. She supposed hers did too.

"That sounds perfect."

"AndI want you to be my muse, but only if you want – nothing creepy or nude, just let me take pictures and sketch while you... do what you do."

Fears of injury invaded her mind, and she pushed them away. Stars took risks. It was flattering that he wanted to use her. And anyway, she liked him.

"Of course!" she chirped, kissing him again, a personal contract. "But normally there are a lot of lifts-"

"Bring a couple friends – whatever you need." This time he kissed her as the train rolled in, tangling their hair together. "I can even put you all on modest payroll, seeing as how I am With Budget."

It was a stupid joke but stupid jokes could be the best. She giggled her way through the doors – she might be a little bit high from secondhand smoke – and watched Peter as he leaned against a column, winking at her as she rolled away.


	8. so happy you could die

She let herself into her building caught somewhere between wanting to curl into sleep and wanting to go through lines one last time. One of the Kazan scenes had been entirely rearranged, and she kept getting the order mixed up.

Derek, she knew, would be working all night, hopefully finally solving whatever was bugging him so he would stop running them ragged. Which was why she stopped short when she found him slouched back against her door. Head bowed and arms crossed, it was hard to judge his mood and she approached with caution; it could be anything, though she'd long since ceased expecting anything from him. He could be there to apologize (unlikely) or give her new lyrics to learn for tomorrow (more likely), or anything really. She wondered why he hadn't just called, and how long he'd been waiting.

They had a pattern and he was breaking it, so she could break it too. They never talked, not outside rehearsal, not even a harmless giggle, "ouch," or "bye." But she wanted to know why he was there, and when she had her keys out and he was blocking the lock she peered up and started to ask "why-"

Glare of light reflecting off darkened eyes and he swallowed her question, teeth hitting, hands corseting, head drawn to follow his until he was too far around pressing against her back holding her still with a hand on her stomach while the other inched her skirt up and his teeth scraped along the exposed tendon in her neck.

She stabbed at the lock as he ground against her insistently, torn between seizing the moment to discover just _what_ he was pressing into her, and the more practical desire to move things inside.

He wanted her. She wanted him. No reason to think why, if someone else had teased him to the brink before saying-

Stop.

She compromised by wiggling back into him while pushing his hand down closer where she wanted it, and leaning forwards to open the door as he growled distraction in her ear.

Things moved pretty fast as soon as the door was knocked shut. Their clothes littered the floor over the few steps to her bed, minus her heels. They made her taller. And she liked them. He seemed to as well, when sat back and dragged the narrow heel up his leg and stroked him with the toe. A dancer's flexibility came in useful in all sorts of ways.

Like throwing her leg over his back, a hook giving her easy control of her movements when he lay over her, kissing her favourite places and toying with her clit at a pace precisely at odds with the general sense of urgency.

It figured he'd become so much more _interesting_ only after they were over.

Probably he was thinking the same thing about her.

Propping on one arm, he tried to push her legs farther apart, finger running up and down, but that wasn't what she wanted in her and as he well knew, there wasn't a reason for it. Suddenly pulling herself up pulled him down, and the seconds it took to brace himself were enough for her to squirm into place and catch his erection between her thighs, licking the surprise off the tip of his tongue.

Two can play at any game.

She gave him an uncoordinated massage, the motion coming back to taunt her tight muscles, while he gave her breast the most thorough examination it had ever had.

There was more. Other. It didn't matter what. She lost track. He was everywhere or she was: skin on skin needs and haves a cool swipe of leather warm linen hot hands burning mouths winning over pulled hair scratched arms and backs.

She was close when there was more air than skin, leg back around him for leverage every fast, deep stroke. It was getting hard to stay in tempo but Derek looked worse off, trembling every time he pushed himself back up.

The stamina of a dancer also had its uses. Admittedly, not being on top helped.

She was ready to give up and come, except the angle was a little off, pace too slow, force lessened right when she needed more. Whenever she tried to compensate he shifted, she squeezed him in frustration he shook his head and slowed down further. It was a fight not so much torturing, as avoiding the end.

If that was the way he wanted it...

Walking fingers up down and around she cupped his balls and he faltered, rubbed and he hissed, let them roll around in her palm and she smiled. For good measure she squeezed and relaxed, squeezed and relaxed around him, holding herself from the edge out of pride more than self-control.

He slipped again, as a drop of sweat fell into her collarbone. His breathing was already rasping and ragged when he growled "Ivy."

Anything else but desperation and she would have laughed.

She didn't want to laugh.

She let herself tip and fall, barely noticing when he followed a heartbeat after. Internal fireworks met slippery skin and pleasant fullness went with the warm weight she kept hold of to hold in the last sparks.

She was still a little dazed when he pulled out and rolled off, pondering imprints of hands as the shower ran. Alone. She pushed down the thought that curves he'd measured, lines he'd traced, were sex to him and art to Peter.

Not that she was complaining, but why _was _he there?

An indulgent question. She knew why. Or at least, why he'd been in a bad mood all week, and she had a sneaking suspicion what was behind that as well.

Like it was any other night he was mostly dressed, sitting on the bed finishing with some buttons, when she decided to just go for it. That's how you got ahead in life. Take risks. Be a Star.

"How's the Diamond number coming?"

She asked it innocently but his head whipped around, eyebrows raised like she'd screamed.

"It's not ready, if that's what you mean." He shrugged it off, and it was strange how normal his voice still sounded in her apartment.

"Can I help?"

There were a few moments as she waited for him, playing out his internal struggle between saying no and the ingrained habit of how this question had always gone before. Even when, really, she couldn't.

She knew the feeling.

"I'll be out in a few minutes," she said, giving him no more time to say no. If it wasn't immediate, he didn't mean it. She tugged the sheet after her – they were sex and maybe they could work together, but she wasn't going to walk around naked.

Heels still on, she gave him a little kick as an afterthought, prodding him towards the couch. "My script's in my bag."

She kept listening for the door as soap and sweat ran down the drain, half sure, even as she dressed in hastily snagged clothes, that he'd be gone.

He wasn't.

Her notebook lay open on the coffee table, Derek looming over it, worrying at a fingernail.

"What does it look like so far?"

He didn't look up as she padded over to curl in the armchair, rubbing a towel into her scalp.

"It looks like a bunch of dancers standing around on stage." The irritation wasn't for her. She even found it endearing.

He was also lying, in part. She knew he was more than capable of chucking out hours or days, even weeks of work to start over. But by breaktime gossip, the choreography (had been) mostly complete. He'd run it several times, for several hours, with-

Stop.

He was back working in her apartment, only now she was back as Marilyn. She didn't have to divide her attention between love and jealousy, the show and looking for every tick where she could be better, have more control than-

Stop.

He was here, she was her, he was letting her back into the process and it didn't matter if he'd invited Karen to lounge on his bed stretching her long legs, petulant little know-nothing mouth offering stupid ideas he'd-

Stop.

Stop. Stop. Stop.

When she opened her eyes he was watching her, eyebrows drawn, studying her like she was a script he wasn't sure what to do with.

"That probably won't work."

"No," he replied with a cautious half-smile.

"What was wrong with it before?"

His jaw clench and he looked away.

She shouldn't have asked that, should have pretended to not know there had ever been another version. Shouldn't have brought up Karen, even tangentially, not now that she was finally gone.

He picked up the binder only to slam it back down on the table, standing abruptly.

"You know what's wrong with it."

_Now_ the irritation was for her.

She let him go without a word when he stalked away, only he veered from the door to throw himself onto the bed.

Maybe they _could_-

Stop.

She did know. Only she didn't. Always just knowing had sort of worked for them, until she found out it hadn't. Maybe it had never really worked at all, they were just pretending. If he knew _her_, he'd know-

"I can't do it like Karen did it," she said flatly.

He spat a wry laugh into his forearm and _now_ they were on the same page.

"No."

No, she could never do it like Karen. But that didn't have to mean she was worse, per se. They were always two very different Marilyns.

Karen just had _something_-

STOP.

He was watching her again. She wanted to smack him. For every painful thing he'd ever done. And was still doing, pretending she should be perfectly fine just because she _didn't_ have- If he was going to walk out, it was going to be early, this time.

"Then you should get her back," she instructed, voice hard. "You've overruled Eileen and Tom and Julia before. And she'll come back, it's her dream."

He'd been nodding, not looking at her, until he rushed her last words. "It's not. And you _know_ it's not."

He wasn't pissed and that pissed her off.

"That was never a problem before."

"Ivy-"

There was more for her to lose than to gain. Slamming a DVD player was as effective as trying to slam a hydraulic door, so she settled for jabbing at the buttons. She didn't even care that he now knew she could still find the right number in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes without checking the menu screen.

He was standing again, wavering, when she slammed the remote into his chest (much more satisfying), and didn't bother to see if he'd caught it before planting herself on her bed, arms crossed.

Personal and professional were two very different things.

"I refuse to stand around on stage looking like an idiot," she snapped, staring straight ahead.

The first time through was quiet and tense, a few low observations withering into the air. The second was better, until whatever conversation they'd been having – or _not_ been having – was yet another chunk of time boxed up and left behind.

She huffed. "I'm not saying it _should_ be. But Marilyn would never have done it that way if they weren't forcing her into her stereotype. She was _funny_."

"We can't sit here doing Channing, we can't sell it and no one will buy it," Derek countered. "And you don't know _what_ she'd have done, or even if she _could_."

_Like Karen?_ she wanted to ask. But that would only take them backwards.

"Then you're a male chauvinist pig." He actually was, in a way. "The show is about Marilyn, the _real_ Marilyn, not anybody's fantasy." Well... "Except maybe her own," she allowed.

They were both staring at the screen, but she saw him stiffen.

At the end of the scene he paused, rather than looping again.

"We can't do it the way you did it," he announced.

"I know that." What she and Tom had come up with was small, for one room only, silly and overwrought. She butted his knees until he let her pass, and sat down, ignoring his wary eye, and how her thigh was resting against his, to peer at the notes he'd been taking. His handwriting was horrible, but she'd learned to read it months ago.

"Here." She tapped a lyric.

All her Marilyn DVDs were still neatly stacked, and it didn't take too long to find the one she wanted. Or the scene.

"She was barely conscious during filming," Derek objected as the menu screen came up.

True, Some Like It Hot hadn't exactly been Marilyn's finest hours on set. But the result – "It was still her, even if she was at her worst."

The scene had started, and he kept quiet, crossing his arms and grumping to himself.

"See? They let her be funny, even if she didn't like the movie. And she was." She glared at him from her position on the floor. "And I think she'd do _that_," she pointed at the paused screen, "here." Poking the script. "Even she'd know that tableau is stupid."

"That might work." He didn't sound entirely convinced, but penciled in the note.

Pose by gesture, wink by lift, they broke into the "official" version, prising Marilyn free of the constraints made by Director, Movie, and History itself. The framework of the original was there, but it was turned inside out, looking deeper, like the song itself. Like the show itself.

When they were far enough in, most of the new choreography sketched in, he helped her push the chair and table out of the way. The space was too small for any proper dancing, but she could do the smaller moments and mime the rest as they mapped out transitions and timing, and he called out changes and narrated what else was happening around her. Most of the time, when he told her to do something differently, she did. Sometime she argued. A few she ignored flat out. He didn't fight those. She suspected the issues would come back up in the rehearsal room.

They didn't fight. Not really. Some creative differences, but it wasn't personal, and made her feel like he was taking her seriously. It was even fun. Derek was a little more animated, less wrapped in his own head. Usually he'd listen to her with one ear, and would turn around when he wanted to converse, pull her off the bed when he wanted to see how something would look. This time it was like an invisible wall had always been between them, and now it was cracked.

She could breath. She was Marilyn, she was allowed to care about the show and the character. Now that he was staring at her, usually critically, but sometimes, when she finished spinning, it would be a different kind of look and she was almost sure he was picturing her in the role. No one else.

At one point, they manhandled the couch over alongside the bed, tripping and nearly falling into each other as it caught on the rug. It was too long and made it hard to leave, but left a deeper space for her to move in.

An couple hours with her testing things out and they went back to watching the movies, seeing new ideas through words on a page. She liked it, eyes blurring over a good outline of what they would try with the full ensemble.

"It's good," she murmured sleepily.

It was so early it was late, or was it so late it was early? They'd been rewatching the number and what they were looking at wasn't right at all. It was too late, she finally realized, they'd never managed to stop the film. She wasn't even sure where the remote was, and the few steps to the TV were a few too far.

Derek was slouched low, maybe asleep. He did sleep sometimes. She shifted to find a more comfortable position, less surprised than she thought she should be when he uncrossed his arms and put one around her, resettling until he'd tucked her snugly against his chest.

"I like it." She tapped his chest to get his attention, already more than hazy.

She let herself fall into sleep, but not before giving the tiniest of smiles when he agreed with her.

"I do too."


	9. we would still be friends

She woke, stretched on her couch, tucked under the blanket flipped over from her bed. She was alone. She was also waking up near noon, leaving no time for anything except a quick change of clothes before dashing to the rehearsal space. Being up all night working on the show with the Director sounded like an euphemism, and was not an excuse for tardiness she wanted to share.

In the end she arrived a little out of breath and later than Derek, though not the last one in. There was a knot of excitement in the corner and Ivy deposited herself there, next to Bobby, prepared for more bad news but more than happy to squeal over Jessica's official new status as Aunt.

Sometimes it could be hard to remember that outside of Broadway, lives were still moving on.

"When you all have finished chatting," Derek was making a slow circuit of the room. "It might be nice if we could _finally_," as if it wasn't entirely his fault, "stage the Diamond number."

He didn't look at her, but a few pages landed in her lap. She returned Jessica's quirked eyebrow and looked down: her copy of the lyrics. In her dash out the door, it hadn't occurred to her that he'd taken them.

Linda would have had a clean copy anyway.

Except these were not her pages. Her notes were still scratched in, but they were cleaner, free of ensemble blocking, the rough edges stitched together.

A black arrow, in evil ink, drew her attention to one of the points she'd refused to give in on. Jessica and now Bobby were watching her, so she bit her cheek against a smile as they opened notebooks and pulled pages, tied up hair and finished stretching.

They moved slowly, bit by bit. Derek and Josh must have been working all morning, because Josh didn't miss a beat stepping amongst the ensemble to demonstrate combinations and realign wayward steps.

Even knowing most of her choreography ahead of time didn't put Ivy too far ahead of the game. Half-steps in her apartment weren't a substitute for the full breadth of the space, and imagining arms lifting her wasn't the same as making sure she was in pace and ready to shift her weight after a particular spin.

When everyone else took notes she pretended to write, double checking what would come next. She knew what they had worked out by heart, and she knew Derek did too. But when you were after perfection, no detail was too small and nothing was certain.

Being too careful was also when you slipped up.

Working out the steps in her head, gauging distance, she took the exaggerated cabaret walk across stage left, only noticing something was wrong when the room giggled.

"What?"

"Amusing as that might be," Derek said dryly, "we're working rather quickly so try not to show off until the ensemble is set."

She blushed furiously, pacing the distance through subsequent runs until Derek asked for what she'd done before.

At least everyone merely thought he'd liked it, and not that...

It wasn't even something she should care about. If they knew. They'd already judged her, as far as they would, for getting involved with him the first time. It wouldn't matter that she was doing it again. Except that this was something different. It was worse, somehow. This was... Professional.

She paid closer attention to what Derek called out, less to what was written. A few more things _had_ changed. Now they worked better. Most of them.

That part near the end would still _not_ work. She could tell before they took positions. Derek loved lifts; they were all over everything he did. They just weren't always the best option.

"Good, but Marilyn needs to end up farther downstage."

"I'm sure the audience would prefer to see you, Miss Monroe."

"Bobby, step back."

Trying to force it, Derek was getting louder.

The problem was that she was supposed to be unimpressed by a crowd of men trying to impress her. Bobby and Matthew would hold her up, circling the group, letting her look down on them from above. A position with distance, a position with power.

Maybe it was that she was too short.

It might have worked with Karen.

"Take Five." The loudest command yet, and the bulk of the ensemble scampered for the hall as Derek and Josh stood inside the set, talking in low tones as they pointed at different bits of floor.

Not having felt the need to leave, Ivy sat against the wall. What she wanted to do was stand up and join the impromptu meeting, find out what they were doing and argue her case again. The night before – well, earlier in the morning, actually – Derek would have listened. Then he would have let her try.

But there was no guarantee he'd listen now.

She didn't know what they were; if they'd had a glimpse of something they could be, or it was only a night when she happened to be what he needed.

It had been fun, and that's what kept her seated. She wanted it to mean more than it did, because she'd liked it. It was nice to laugh and have fun and work on the show, she felt important and valued and like work was something they really shared. And not like Derek saw her only as a decent performer and comfortable warm body in bed.

But Derek didn't work well with others. Some of the things he said really were true. She traced a nail over the permanent black arrow.

"Okay, new idea." He clapped loudly at Linda's nod, focusing their attention. "Bobby, Matthew, you'll deposit our Marilyn on the piano _here_ instead," he slapped a platform, "the rest of you as you were..."

He was doing it anyway, she realized with surprise, what she'd wanted to do all along. It wasn't entirely her idea, she'd been thinking about Michael and Ellis dropping her onto the piano while they all sang to her...

Derek was running a finger down his script and squinting at invisible sets while Josh went through the finer points of the change. Now they'd place her on the piano upstage, pushing her in an arc downstage as she laughed, always separate, always higher, removed. At the end of the section she'd be in profile, where a flip onto her side would give her a private moment with the audience before a nod to the pianist would have him helping her down-

Her dreams took her farther than the run and the metaphoric curtain came down as she turned to smile secretively at the mirrors.

"Good." Derek either sounded pleased or relieved. "Now, if we could try that again with the suitors falling all over each other a bit less literally? This is supposed to be high society, not a boxing match."

It wasn't that she wanted credit for the fix. Not public credit, anyway. A smile would have been nice, a look; anything really, to prove he remembered.

She kept tracing and retracing the arrow as the guys bickered over who tripped whom and when they should move. Everything was so hard to tell with Derek, even now, when she had resolved to keep things simple. Was the mark a playful last stand on something which really was his decision? Or was it yet another way he imposed his will, proving she was nothing but a pawn, no matter what seemed to go on between them?

"Has Miss Monroe forgotten how to use a pencil?" He had a tendency of cutting through every other sound in a room by slice or brute force.

Her nail was still stabbing at the page when she looked up, startled, to find him stalking towards her.

This time everyone did notice something off. Not surprising, as he was making a spectacle out of leaning heavily by her side on the platform, brushing her hand away and violently disappearing his own notes to put in something else.

People were staring. She shrugged, helplessly.

He bumped her shoulder as he crossed back to his table. "If the ensemble is ready to stop falling over?"

Helping to reset the platform, Ivy checked the new instructions before taking her place.

A theatrical version of shorthand was crucial: there was never time nor space to write or read paragraph descriptions.

Derek had managed to collapse the sequence into just four words at the arrow's tip:

"Do it your way."

* * *

Sam and Dennis had been more than happy to go with her to meet Peter. Dancers would do almost anything for a paycheck, though it was clear their enthusiasm had more to do with meeting the "mystery guy" she wouldn't talk about. It wasn't that she'd been hiding him, exactly. But Peter wasn't part of her world, and she liked it that way.

"Great, you could make it!"

He met them at the door – it was where the party had been, and it was more striking by daylight. The old warehouse was lined in makeshift rooms, leaving the middle a vast empty space dotted with workstations which could be shifted in a moment. You could do anything here; wavy light filtering warm through the skylights, formal lighting already hung from tracks installed in the ceiling.

"How do you get up there to move them?" she wondered.

He followed her gaze, hauling her closer with a hand casually grabbing her waist. "You don't want to know." His teeth gleamed. "And if you happen to know anyone on the Safety Commission, I'd consider it a personal favour if you didn't mention it to them."

They made introductions all around; her and Peter, Sam, Dennis, and Lawrence - a strikingly tall black man with high cheekbones and dreadlocks bound behind his back. He'd be taking photographs, Peter explained, leaving him free to sketch, and to keep tabs on the video cameras already pointed to a small stage.

It was all more elaborate, more formal, than she'd expected. She didn't know what she'd expected.

Doubtfully, she stared at herself in the mirror of a borrowed space Peter had told her to change in. He'd told her to wear whatever she wanted, whatever made her feel beautiful. Rehearsal clothes were purely functional, she couldn't dance in street clothes, and she could never keep her costumes except-

It was a dress she'd used back in high school for all her solo shows, and ever since then she'd dragged it around just because. Soft and flirty, the high full skirt and simple, graphic black and white design had made her fearless, even when the odds were against her. Which usually, they were.

Now it made her feel silly, under-dressed in a teenage fancy. It still fit, but the hem was frayed, the black mostly faded, smudges of makeup burned in from the hugs and tears of success and failure.

She hadn't seen the flaws. She saw them now.

Sam was outside, peeking through the crack and calling for her. "I'll be out in a minute!" and she breathed in and out, just like that, no worries. She could dance in anything, and that was all he needed. A peek into how she worked, like she'd get a peek into what he did. He wanted the lines, the movement, a blank form he'd be redrawing and repainting anyway.

Still, she worried.

He stared as she crossed over to where the boys were already stretching. "Wow." Then he hugged her. "You're perfect."

Peter didn't know what he wanted, so they started slow, basic combinations and lifts, calling out the names to create a common vocabulary. He took notes but kept mostly quiet as Lawrence snapped away, sometimes shifting a floor light or asking them to do something again. A couple of times he ran off into one of the side rooms.

They were doing a snippet from Bombshell when he stopped them, calling Ivy over with a serious expression.

"I'm sorry," she shrugged, "I'm too short to look artistic on-"

"You're perfect," he said robotically, but she wasn't actually offended. "Can I buy your dress?"

_What?_ "Can you buy my..." she trailed off, blinking.

"I'm sorry, you must love it, but if I'd known I would have..." The thought finished in his head, and he looked at her pensively.

Trust her to show up to play muse, and have a ratty old dress steal the show.

"If you want it," she spoke slowly, "you can have it." For him it had a use, value of some sort. For her, there were only memories and battered dreams. At least one of them would be a star.

He kissed her, and that almost made it okay. "And that is why I love you." Turning to call for "Lace," a girl even shorter than Ivy, he missed her wince.

"Lace will take care of you. She's a whiz, I promise."

Ivy followed her back to a small room hung with swatches, bolts of fabric teetering on shelves made of cinder blocks and plywood.

Her street clothes were in her bag. They didn't need to throw together something else for her to wear.

"Shouldn't I take it off?" Lace had set her in the middle of the floor with surprising strength, positioning her like a dummy.

"Nope," came the answer, through a mouthful of pins. "Easier like this. An' I was watching before, it won't get in your way."

The situation was bordering on absurd, so Ivy let the mystery continue as Lace covered her in gathers held with pins, irregular lines of thin blue tape, pulled down her hair and finally stood back, squinting, she spun her finger around, instructing Ivy to twirl.

Reality was never as exciting as the wondering.

"Looks perfect!"

The interjection made her jump.

"Yeah, what is it?"

Self-consciously, she turned around. Fern and Casey – she'd met them both, was it only two days ago? - were peering in.

"Hiya Ive! Did she stick you yet?"

Lace glowered more intensely at Fern. "You moved."

Specifically ignoring the little exchange, Casey smiled innocently and spun a finger at her ear. "We're going out to sketch-"

"Just to the roof-"

"If we're not back when Peter lets you go, come get us and we'll find food!"

"Or drinks!"

"Or boys!"

Ivy was relatively sure that she was important to none of that, but it made her feel accepted and liked, so she gave them a bright grin and a non-committal bob of her head.

Lace's continued frown, lighter now that Fern was gone, somehow made her more approachable.

"So what _are_ you doing?"

"Distressing you." Lace stuck her head out into the open space. "Black and white or colour?"

"I don't know yet," wafted back.

"Both it is," she grumbled.

Ivy was going to ask for clarification, but in the end she didn't need it. Taped shapes became shaded blotches of rust or bleach, pins marked torn hems and whip-stitched patches. More makeup – lipsticks and mascara – streaked over her hips, blotted the frayed ends, and dabbed across her shoulder to be swept down her arm with Lace's lips and eyes acting brushes.

Distressed, she was.

Lace looked worse for wear, but pushed Ivy into a chair without pausing, scrubbed her face clean and applied more makeup, thankfully with her fingers this time. A finger comb took seconds, before rubs and sprays of product contoured strands into a new shape. An innocuous bucket proved to contain something which looked exactly like clay, and Lace rubbed it between her hands before massaging Ivy's bare skin with little regard for where she stopped and fabric (or hair) began.

It occurred to her that if she wasn't used to being manhandled, this would be very uncomfortable.

"Alright." Lace swiped a finger over her temple one last time. "I think we've got it." For the first time in their half-hour acquaintance, she sounded happy.

From what Ivy could see of herself, she wasn't sure if the point had been to make her look like a refugee, or not.

Hers was not to question why.

A large streak of burlap twitched aside to reveal her reflection in a full length mirror.

Not a refugee, exactly. More like-

"It's beautiful," she breathed, where "it" somehow included her as a complete package, from dress, to hair, to makeup, all layered over her form...

Lace gave her a faux hug from behind, as if more would ruin the effect. "Remember me if you ever need any costume work done," and then after shoving her out called after: "And remind your boyfriend he owes me a website."

"The Eternal Dancer." Peter actually clapped when she came out.

He still left them the reigns, sometimes asking for a move or combination off his list, often using hand gestures to describe what he wanted more of. Mostly his notes were to keep cycling across the stage, ending up ready to start again. After they figured that out, it was easier to design short routines he'd like.

She danced on her own, with Sam or Dennis or both, was lifted and lowered, jumped off the large crates again and again, caught or (once or twice) dropped or tripped, lofted back up at the other end.

Every day they danced for the theatre. It was an art, restricted by the stage, the choreography and the need to fit in and make sense to the audience. They loved it. But this was _dancing_, and it could be easy to forget that they loved this too. They had a stage, but there were no rules other than gravity and the limits of muscles and combined imagination. And they knew how to play with those.

Ivy thought she could do this forever.

Only of course, nothing is forever.

She needed a break but pushed onwards, barely feeling the scrapes and bruises, or the itch of sweat-trails drying down her back. Peter called a halt before her body gave out, and then called for pizza. She stretched and spun, not wanting to let the feeling go.

Peter disappeared. Fern and Cassie, Lace and a handful of people she almost recognized materialized with the smell of food. Complimenting her, complimenting Lawrence, sifting through his photos as they finished uploading onto the computer. Dennis and Sam were dragged off to look at sculptures by predatory femme fatales, only slightly reassured by the reassurance: "It's okay, we just want to look at you."

Then the sun eclipsed.

She'd met a boy once, whose idea of foreplay was to explain how you could tell the age of a star by what temperature it burned at. And that the temperatures, along with other things she hadn't retained, made the stars different colours, even if they all looked the same to her. At least, _would_ look the same, even away from the blinding lights of the city.

If that was so, then an eternity's worth of stars lived and died like a rainbow of fireflies flickering on and off.

Shadows hung from the ceiling on makeshift scaffolding, shifting and tilting and swapping out gels and gobos.

Lights set, pizza eaten (mostly salads, by the dancers), what must be the world's largest blackout curtain blocking any stray ray of natural light: they danced.

A small crowd came and went in the dark, she could feel them. But they didn't expect anything, they were just watching her – _them_ – not a show. A free form rehearsal, more than anything. A hundred aimless photographs before you find the one you want. She and Sam and Dennis and Tom and everyone she knew: they lived for the theatre. Slept, ate, cried and bled for it, for being something bigger than they could ever be alone. Cogs in a wonderful, beautiful machine.

The lights, even with so many, were too far away to be hot, the space too big. Slow floor fans, here and there, hummed and breezed like Central Park on a perfect evening. Sweat dried off flushed skin, the hairs on her arms rose and her dress tore a little more when Dennis's hand caught, her calf dragged through a tacky puddle of something when she stumbled backwards off their "set."

Until the real sun went down, they did what they loved to do: they danced.

* * *

*Gels change the colour of the light, by a piece of transparent plastic slotted in front of a light. Gobos change the shape of the light, but piece of metal with designs cut in slotted in front of a light.

* * *

_Guest (last chapter) - Thank you!_

_Shanshii - Peter started as a cameo whim, and I squee so hard that I'm not the only one curious about that road. I think the lines will start to get more and more blurry, but Peter's not going anywhere anytime soon. Ish. *eg*_


	10. I don't even need your love

_I'm sorry for the long haitus between chapters. Self-indulgent excuses at the end, but I wanted to say that this story isn't abandoned, I do know how it goes from here, and I haven't, despite it all, quite given up on this show._

* * *

She and Derek became something that was almost, but not quite, exactly what they'd been before. It wasn't just her who had changed, though that was a lot of it. She'd been upset and out of work for most of the time she'd known him. Not anymore. But the things Derek did were a little different. Little things.

She'd been sitting against his pillows, watching him work. She'd always liked watching him work, the irritated line of his back, shifts of his shoulders and varying tone as he put it together. Sometimes he'd think aloud, sometimes he'd overtly ask, and she'd pipe in to the back of his head. Sometimes he'd turn around. Sometimes he'd get up for a drink, and sip at it while his eyes never left her face.

Not a great situation, laid out like that, but he was focused and she knew what that was like and that he paid her any attention at all was more than a little amazing. And anyway, she wasn't just sitting there. She had work too, and questions of her own.

"It's still a waste of the song." He was leaning against the wall, frowning at his script.

"You could extend the scene." It was something to say. Drawing out Marilyn's death to cram in Second Hand White Baby Grand – it felt like a reprisal as it was. It was too hopeful, looking backwards but within the context of a present, and a future. The scene would need to become even more of a tragedy, reworked as the death she hadn't wanted... Even if it was closer to the truth.

"No." Setting down his glass, he crawled across the bed without looking at her, flipping pages and resting his thigh carelessly against her knees. "It should go here," he stabbed the page with a finger, "but Julia is refusing to rewrite the scene."

Not having any way of knowing where he was talking about, she gave a noncommittal encouragement, drifted her eyes down to her own script, and waited.

He was still and silent head bowed scratching lightly at the page and there was something familiar enough that she gave up pretense and slipped alongside him, moving his hand so she could see.

Julia _was_ attached to this part of the book. It hadn't been touched in weeks.

"What about putting it back in the Strausberg scene?" That would mean she didn't get it, not all of it anyway, but it was too good to lose.

He sighed. "It didn't make any sense there to begin with. That was when we were trying to keep Rebecca from singing."

And the new song was a better fit.

It sounded like he was done for the night. He always talked more, and less productively, when he was tired or out of ideas and was ready to move on to other activities.

She pushed her nails through his hair, tickled her way down his spine, between his shoulder blades to the dip in the small of his back to catch on his belt. Watching for him to let it go and relax.

He wiggled fitfully.

She gave it some more thought. His solution made sense, for the show, and he wasn't in the mood to consider any others. The only real problem was with the creative team.

"You could trade her for it. Julia," she clarified to a glaring eye.

"What?"

"Give her something she wants so she'll give you what you want."

"I do know what the word means," he grouched, shifting away.

Okay, yes, she'd been teasing him a little. But it was hard to take his wrath seriously when he sounded, and looked, like a petulant child.

"You know," she set her head down on folded hands to see more of his face, "it wouldn't kill you to compromise sometimes."

With that he rolled off the edge, turning straight back to his mini bar. "I'm forever _compromising_ with the their whim of the day."

Sighing, she flipped though the pages as he stood outside her line of sight, knowing he was waiting for her to turn around and invite him into bed. She would have, before. But that was before.

"Here," she commanded, once she'd found what she was looking for. He growled, but eventually curiosity, or frustration, won out. There was a bang of glass hitting wood, the slosh of liquid, and he was leaning over her to look.

"That staging is brilliant."

"It's very good," she conceded.

It was one of the DiMaggio scenes, right after the USO number – when Marilyn had cut and run on their honeymoon. The dialogue was always ambiguous, but they'd been playing with it close, love and affection with tragic conflict already building beneath the surface.

Julia wanted more awareness, more pain, more distance neither character could bring themselves to bridge.

"You know why she wants it. You k now she's thinking of-" By the end of Previews they'd all known, the tension and arguments had torn through the building. But the topic was taboo, no one spoke of it, even vague allusion relegated to whispers in noisy, crowded bars.

"And that is exactly why this is not her decision."

It wasn't her say, she ran what was set until instructed otherwise, but she'd thought about it, at night, picking apart emotions and comparing them to what she knew from her research.

"But she's not wrong." In that second she had a flash of insight and blindly caught at his shirt before he could shut down. "And you know it." She'd used her sultry voice, the one he always responded to, and let go of his shirt to flick at his waistband before drawing a path down his thigh.

There were things every girl could learn from Marilyn.

He wasn't relaxed but he was relieved, kneeling on the edge of the mattress to meet her when she turned onto her side. She tilted her head away from his mouth, leaving her neck exposed.

"I know" he kissed his way down from her jaw, "many things."

"You know Marilyn loved DiMaggio. As much as she could. As much as she'd let herself." This was iffy territory, they usually talked technicalities, in his bedroom. And motivations, with a crowd in the practical rehearsal room, always felt a little academic.

He paused, holding very still, before dropping a kiss next to the strap of her teddy. "But she always need more," he hedged, "was always searching."

"For an ideal," Ivy allowed. "But Marilyn wasn't an ideal. Not to herself."

It went against her better judgment, but then they were professionals first, weren't they? That's what he'd said. His forehead slid over her shoulder as she sat up on her knees and crawled off the bed, pulling him along with her into a hug.

Confused, he let her tug him around, but left his arms at his sides.

Of all the things they never said or did, they'd never hugged. Maybe that wasn't so odd.

But this was how the scene went.

"They tried. In their little imagined house just big enough for two, if they were very still and held on." She squeezed him tighter. "Because as soon as they let go the world would tear them apart again." She twitched despite herself when he hesitantly put his arms around her. "They were desperate."

She left the moment past dramatic point, because she wasn't Marilyn and he wasn't DiMaggio and it felt nice.

"But they weren't. Not like this. They called it them against the world but that's a cop out."

It was too easy to break away; as soon as she started to let go he let her. Without looking back, she crossed to the other side of the room, a stage-worth of space between them.

"They were an ocean apart. They chose it. They might have been desperate when they married but days later that's where they were."

He was where she'd left him, watching her blankly.

"It was the beginning of the end. They were already over, and they knew it. Maybe the public didn't know, but they did. And they were angry."

She let herself fall into it now, a hollow anger, not just at him, but at herself. She'd thought – Marilyn had thought – Marilyn had hoped that one moment could change everything.

"They loved each other, but they couldn't make it work. They were only together, really together, in dreams."

Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Perfect couple, perfect life.

"They'd promised each other it would. And they were scared."

Derek met her eyes, and they were glinting with irritation, anger, fear maybe, but she was still picturing him as DiMaggio and the scene wasn't over.

"Scared they'd run. Scared the other wouldn't come after them, that they couldn't go after- Scared if they tried, there'd be nothing to find when they got there."

Everyone was afraid. But with Marilyn the legend, the reason everyone watched her, everything was larger than life. Pour in all your worries and longings and she'd swallow them and show you what it was to have more.

"And maybe there wouldn't have been," she whispered. "DiMaggio always went to her, even after she was dead. It was Marilyn who could never get past her fear."

In the scene, DiMaggio should cross the stage, slowly, like Marilyn was a scared rabbit.

Stop.

The memory of the USO number would be fresh in everyone's memory, the laughter, love of hundreds, thousands. Life in the spotlight. She'd stand still, this time, he'd catch her. But the embrace would be so much more fragile.

Fade to Black.

She wondered if Marilyn could have been happy, if she wasn't too scared, too damaged, to try. Or if it would always have gone the way it did.

Derek was staring at the floor, not meeting her eye, but his chest was rising and falling faster than normal. At least she thought it was. But the light was dim, and one always could see what they liked, in the shadows.

Cue the uncomfortable thought that he might be uncomfortable. She had been (still was) feeling emotional. It was her job, her forte, she was an actress but he'd never claimed to be an actor, so she thought it would be best to give them both a moment.

Unless she was just scared.

STOP.

That was theatre, not them. In Real Life Marilyn and DiMaggio hadn't been that simple either.

Already near the door, she was halfway through it when Derek spoke, making her jump.

"Where are you going?"

Hardly far, was she, half naked. It was a hysterical thought, she pushed it down. "Kitchen," she answered instead, brightly. "I want some tea."

It wasn't until she was climbing the stairs on her way back up that it occurred to her that he might have wanted her to leave. Forget all the emotional baggage she might or might not have brought up, she'd basically tried to restage an entire scene, one he didn't want to change, and there were lines, blurry as they may be.

Before entering she peeked through the bedroom doorway. He was lying on the bed, papers removed, shirt off and hands behind his head. She was hovering uncertainly when he turned towards her, eyebrows raised in friendly inquiry.

"You're out of milk." It was the most benign thing she could think of.

"Leave a note and they'll take care of it." "They" being whatever service magically came by when no one was there, cleaned and laundered and kept the fridge stocked.

She tried to kiss him while crawling over to her side, and he tumbled her down until her head rested on his shoulder.

"I doubt she'd take it. From me," he remarked.

Ivy thought she would, but then she didn't know much about their relationship. And after his little coup, you could hardly blame Julia if she was suspicious.

"She will if you have Eileen suggest it." That was true. "Anyway, that's what she's there for."

She didn't know she might not be, in the subsequent silence, until he asked: "are you okay?" and found herself watching her fingers play over his chest.

"Of course!" Almost always, that was how she answered that question: chipper, reassuring, and a complete lie. This time she wasn't lying, not really. She was getting the song she wanted and the scene she preferred, and had a hand in making it happen. She was feeling a lot like a star.

And then she was abruptly dislodged.

"Good." A smile in a husky voice against her lips while he tickled her ribs.

She giggled.

Marilyn had never been very hap;y with her career. Her control never stretched very far, or at least not very productively.

There were a lot of things a girl could learn from Marilyn, really. Like to never expect to have everything.

* * *

She and Peter had reached a sort of steady state too. Her life had been increasingly consumed by Bombshell, and he was pushing himself every bit as hard to get ready for his opening. After a week of missed calls and canceled dates, one hasty breakfast became two, until they had a standing time: 7am at their diner.

They'd literally fallen into it one rainy afternoon, and then had fallen in love. It was the sort of tiny hole in the wall where even among all the people and bustle of the city, it felt like a small town. Like family, where everybody knows your name.

Open 24 hours, performers were a staple clientele, and they served everything from wheat germ and kale to the greasiest of comfort foods. Best of all, everything was cheap and plentiful.

Each of them would go there anyway, which was why they never took it personally if the other didn't show up. Like if Peter was in the middle of inspiration, or Ivy had early call, if she'd overslept or he'd drunk himself into a stupor after tearing up a bad idea.

A coffee mishap had her running late, and she slid into the next stool, kissing him on the cheek before he had time to look up from his pancakes.

"Parfait, honey?"

"Yes please." Ivy smiled brightly at the waitress. It was a 'build your own' order, but she was here more often than not, and they didn't just know her name. If she wanted, she could have asked for an omelet, and a plate of egg whites, spinach, tomato and mushrooms would have appeared.

"Early morning or late night?" She rubbed his arm, scratching lightly at the flannel. This was a standard question.

"Depends. What was yesterday?" He looked worse than he sounded, and he smelled like turpentine.

"Can you really work like this?"

"No." He collapsed dramatically against her shoulder. If he was leaning his whole weight they would have fallen to the floor, but Ivy wasn't sure it was entirely a joke either. "Food, and then I'm going home to die."

She played with his hair as her breakfast arrived. "Thanks Marie." Tipping Peter back upright, she dug a spoon into the old-fashioned glass. "So it's going well?"

He stuffed the rest of a pancake into his mouth, and pointed innocently to his chipmunk cheeks. The only appropriate response to that was an eyeroll, then a quick turn of the head to disguise a grin.

"We've got a few minutes." Food swallowed, he tugged at her sleeve. "Let's play. What if I do die of overwork?" She was already turning, but he kept convincing her anyway. It was part of the game. "Don't I deserve some fun in my last hour?"

"Oh absolutely." She kicked at the base of the stool. "Though if I were you I'd be looking for a different kind of _fun_."

"Ooh, dirty. Does your mother know you have those thoughts?"

Her next kick went wild, connecting with flesh. What if that woman was walking alligators instead of Pekinese?"

"Don't be silly. Alligators would look ridiculous in blue sweaters. She'd have to buy pink. What if the Times was printed on bubble gum instead of paper?"

"Farmers would start growing acres of gum trees. Wait, or are they just using fake ingredients now?" She wasn't big on gum.

Peter shrugged, while looking around for a new query. "No idea. But it sounds good, and that's what matters." He stole the last bite of her yoghurt. "Unless you're secret aspiration is to be a gum farmer."

Getting progressively sillier, and with sporadic input from from Marie, they played until there were only a couple minutes left until 7:40, and their bills were paid.

"About Bombshell." He was hiding behind his mug, overly casual. "I saw a poster when I was wandering the streets earlier. It opens the 23rd, right?"

It was their public opening. "Yes."

"So you'll be doing a show for the industry people on the 22nd?"

They were doing a short run of Previews the two weeks before, four shows altogether. After Boston, Eileen had decided not to jinx them. A lot of people would see it then, but nothing would match their first official performance, a black tie affair for the rich, famous, and important, as well as friends and family.

It struck her then that she'd always assumed Peter would be there, and for the even more exclusive party later on that night. But thinking back, she wasn't sure she'd ever officially asked him.

"I'm so sorry, I meant to invite you – as my date. You can come, can't you?"

"That's what I wanted to talk to you about." His eyes slid sideways, and Ivy followed, to see Marie busily wiping a perfectly clean counter. He nodded to her, before pulling Ivy off her stool and out the door.

"What?" He was making her nervous.

"No, it's not... It's just that my gallery show opens the 23nd."

It wasn't until he wouldn't be there that she realized how much she wanted him to be. He did like Broadway, but it wasn't his passion. He'd have been there for her, only for her, the only one in the crowd who would have been.

"You can't come," she whispered.

"No," he looked pained. "I have to be in the space until 1, 2am. Maybe later. But I've already got a group together, we'll be there Saturday night – with lighters.

It still kind of sucked, but he always did make her feel better. He was always thoughtful, even when he was blowing her off. "Open flames are discouraged in the theatre, you know."

"Then cell phones. Most of us don't carry lighters anymore anyway."

It was time to split up and go their separate ways, but Peter still seemed oddly pensive, fingers resting at her elbow. So he couldn't make opening night. It wasn't the end of the world, and he had an unimpeachable excuse.

"What is it?" Which is when she figured it out. "Oh! But your show has a luncheon party on Saturday, doesn't it?" It had always been the whats, and never the whens. Her life, recently, living minute by minute. She poked him. "It's almost perfect."

He was chewing his cheek and she checked her watch. She really did have to leave-

"There something – I wanted you to see it before... Look, I know you'll be busy Thursday night, focused on your show."

True. She hadn't even let herself think about what that night would look like.

"But if you can, I'll be setting up until they kick us out. Just for a minute."

She kissed him, just a peck. "We should have an early night, actually." No one would sleep, but cramming too much at the last minute was begging for trouble. Unless there were changes... "I wish I could promise, but..."

"You'll try." He kissed her, lingering long enough to turn a few heads, fingers playfully poking into the braids of her hairstyle.

Ivy wasn't fooled. Not that he was mad at her, he wasn't that sort of guy. But he was disappointed in her. Another relationship falling prey to the Broadway Insider/Outsider divide. Even when they fit so well, there was that point where work was more important. They'd try, they'd leave messages and spend Saturday supporting each other and push back the end just one more day.

And hope that the push was what mattered.

* * *

_I'm particularly sorry about this chapter, since I'd finished it months ago. But in the midst of several weeks of writers block, some real life stress, and ever-increasing frustration with the choices the show made, I'd lost the will to push._

* * *

_Carla - I'm glad you liked it ;) And poor Ivy, her life would be easier without her mother, and yet with how much she craves her mother's approval..._

_Lizagirl - I don't have the best track record with chaptered fic, admittedly, but I'm too far invested to give up! Even if it takes a while ~*+!_


	11. now and then I think of all the times

_A/N: I have this whole long thing I won't post now, but I want to thank everyone who has reviewed or favourited or followed this story or me, and all the hypothetical readers who are silently following along. I appreciate numbers as much as anyone, but I write for me, for catharsis and fun. More than that though, I write for you. I'm a reader too, and writing is how I can contribute to a medium that I love so dearly. And without you, that can't happen. So thank you, to you all._

* * *

"There's the young lady."

She kept forgetting. A quick turn in response to someone calling her name, pleasantries gone on too long, eyes incautiously left closed or open and her smile would remain only she wouldn't know why. Just a room, people, drinks and dresses and she was rather popular, tonight. That last thought was enough, just enough strange and she'd wrack her mind and yes- she had been on stage and she was the star. On Broadway. For real. For the first time. There would be more times.

"From last night."

It had been terrifying. Exhilarating. There had been so many imperfections. It had been perfect. Buzzing heats from the lights heady growing thrumming blinding don't stare at the sun. Her wig slipping through Let's Be Bad. Crashing thumps as something went terribly wrong backstage before Mr. & Mrs. Smith, but she had been focused and she had been alive and she had been.

It had been perfect.

"Of course she looks different now."

Now it was over, memory fading away amongst all the past tense.

She found herself in the midst of a discussion on the modern musical with Jessica's mom and sister, it was slipping again and she let it ebb. After all, this was a memory. Would be a memory. She'd learned what happened when you fought too hard to hold on when it was out of your control.

"Ah, the eternal dancer."

The sentence registered, vaguely familiar but nothing to do with her. She didn't look up. She wasn't just a dancer anymore. Not just a chorus girl.

"Do pardon the presumption, but Miss Lynn, but we were quite taken with your performance this evening."

The conversational grouping had shifted around her, and these men were handsome, refined, flattering.

The audience had been full of them. Invited guests, the rich, the powerful, it was an event as much as a show and tickets were coveted and coveted meant money. Or a connection. Either way the dues were elegance.

A humble response was at her tongue's tip when a hand landed on the small of her back, a jarring note of warmth through silk. She was pulled back before she could realize she'd left, the moment of the _after_.

"Ah, and _there's_ my son!"

* * *

Like Christmas, the sweetest moments of life were anticipation, because the next moment was the same, just as sweet: anticipation. As soon as it happened, as soon as the gift was unwrapping it was unwrapped and you knew. She knew. She knew this and so she tried to savour every second of that last afternoon before the first real (really real?) show, even as the combined energy drove her thoughts forward and the seconds slid by as minutes, landing for a split second awareness during a lift, another as they took a final dinner break, again as she sang her opening notes to a mirror.

More than a year of her life and there were only a handful of heartbeats until all the waiting, the disappointments, the joys and losses and preparation would be over.

The show would always be in progress, of course, it would evolve and grow and so would she, but it could never again be _this_...

She'd gone to the store the night before, not because she was hungry – every meal lately came off a truck – but to walk around the city like everything was normal, like she was normal, like she wasn't _just about _to take her big shot.

"Have you read Dillon's blog?" Bobby slid into the seat next to her, jostling her elbow so that she almost stabbed herself with tines of lettuce.

"No, is it good?"

"Girl you _won't_..."

And she was gigglingly present, meal forgotten for a mad thumb dash onto her phone. Critical reviews were already coming in, but it was the gossip, the words of their fellow actors, the ones who _knew_ who still held so much power. That's when she saw his name in her missed calls list. And her stomach fell through into reality in a whole different way.

"Ivy?"

"I'm sorry. I just- I need to make a call."

Break was almost up and she was in her wig so she took a diva moment – it felt like a diva moment – when she inserted herself into the serious grouping around the tech table. Eileen, Derek, Josh, Linda all looking up at her impatiently as she tried not to look only at Linda, and "I have to... make a call." She thought Linda knew. "I won't leave the building, I won't be long."

"5 minutes." She did, with a little nod. Friends, (boyfriends), family didn't exist at all this week yet still... they did.

"We need to run the curtain call." Eileen's tone was brisk, a warning, not unkind, that no matter how good she'd been, how good she tried to be, it was still _her_ who carried the weight of the show now. No one else.

"I'll be right back," she promised again, and tried to shove down the panic. It was anticipation. The dark side of anticipation. In a moment, it would be over, she could concentrate again.

"Ivy hey." Peter answered on the first ring, when she was just stepping off the elevator and wasn't ready.

"Peter."

"You can't make it."

She hadn't even remembered him, and the worst of it was, she barely felt guilty. That made her feel guilty. Knowing that she couldn't have it all. It had to be about the show, her whole life was about the show right now, she'd made that crucial decision about her life early on and she wasn't about to give up on it now. She had to be about her.

"I'm sorry. I'll try- we have curtain to work on, a couple things- Maybe. I'm not tired" and she wasn't, she realized. Maybe. Maybe it was what she needed. Maybe she could. Maybe it would make her better, maybe even tonight.

"It's okay, it is." The disappointment in his voice was buried under resignation but she could feel it, she could recreate it in herself, and she could see him, dirty and mussed, surrounded by packing material and his own creations worlds away and out of focus but the angles of his face were suddenly so clear she wanted to reach out and touch, for him to be with her, for her to be with him. Because he had his own Bombshell, she knew his energy and he knew her joy. "Don't worry, you need to focus. Actually it might be better that – I'm just sorry I can't-"

His shrug was her shrug.

"No. God, I'm sorry, The timing is just-"

"-crazy."

And they both laughed, at the same moment, and it was warm and comfortable and her panic was gone, the after was better than the before and it was so stupid, all of it, but she felt herself on stage more strongly, vividly, than she had all week and that was the craziest thing of all.

"We have Saturday, right?"

"Saturday," she promised. She'd even talked with Eileen, to make sure, and had her blessing. "I have a couple minutes now, how's put in?"

She was two minutes late, she read it on Linda's face, but she couldn't strip the grin, the bounce in her step, and Linda smiled back.

"Okay, we have Marilyn, places for final curtain."

And she could feel Derek staring at her as she crossed the floor, a tingle between her shoulder blades, and when she took her place and peeked back he wasn't looking at her at all.

It was okay. It was okay. Stop. It was okay. She was more than the show but she was about the show, the role, herself. Right now.

It didn't matter when Derek pulled out change after change after tweak, another look at her death scene that took forever and Eileen was gone and Josh and just her men and Linda and Derek in the theatre with her until it was after midnight and all she wanted to do was go home and sleep and wake up for Christmas morning.

* * *

A finger was stroking her spine, but she already knew who it was.

"Father."

"Derek. Are you going to introduce us properly to your lovely star?"

"Ivy Lynn." She jumped in first, ahead of the edge of... anger? in Derek's voice, meeting surprisingly clear eyes and an open smile that wasn't what she had expected, if she had expected anything. It was still a strange sight on a face that was so much like Derek's.

"Charles Wills." And his handshake was firm but easy as he enveloped her hand with his own. "And may I say that you were sensational, my dear, everything promised and more."

He was smiling and his lips lingered for a graceful moment on her knuckles, while the silent presence behind her leaked tension and she inclined her head in thanks.

"You were greatly missed today, but of course you were busy, we all quite understood. It made for a wonderful story, in fact, very romantic."

She didn't quite know how to answer that.

"Yes, we're quite interested to see what that young artist friend of yours will do next. Of course it's easy to see how you would inspire everyone you meet."

And if _that_ didn't feel pointed, but not at her, cloyingly thick compliments but not sarcastic, gaze still on her but words directed-

That was when it hit her. Peter. "I was just helping a friend."

"Help," he had turned thoughtful, "yes. I don't suppose... you haven't had a chance to see his show, have you?"

"Not yet, I'm planning on going tom-"

"-Excuse us." The interjection was so unexpected she fell back, hitting against Derek's chest. "I believe Miss Lynn is in something of a demand, tonight."

But of course, of course. My dear," and her hand was tugged away from his lips as she was steered away with a firm hand.

Eileen took her, dropped her off and then picked her up from Michael Riedel, who was a nerve-wracking presence in his own right, though she thought she came across well. She wouldn't have another chance. There was someone from the prod staff always in charge of her, not because she couldn't manage but to make sure she was introduced to everyone, shook every hand and charmed every eye. Whether she looked like she needed one or Eileen thought she was doing well, they were taking a break and picking up fresh glasses.

"So you met Derek's father. What did you think?"

"Charles?" She automatically sought his lean figure from the crowd. "He seemed to like the show, why?"

"You must know he and Derek... haven't always seen eye to eye."

Ivy gave a noncommittal noise. There were rumours of course, but good parental relations weren't exactly something she took for granted.

She finally found him, or rather, she found Derek first. The two looked amicable enough, though she recognized tension in Derek's shoulders.

"I don't suppose he's talked about him much?"

Eileen was watching her, small smile and waft of Chanel and elegant sparkles and suddenly Ivy felt very grown up and very out of her depth all at once. This was the life of a star. She missed the easy gossip of the ensemble. Her mouth was dry and she took a small sip of champagne. "Should he have?"

"Perhaps not." A manicured finger landed on her shoulder. "But I'd say he'd appreciate a rescue about now."

And then they were interrupting the mundane, the Elder Wills drifting from talk of London to enthuse about Let's Be Bad in a way that made her glow, even as she was deposited at Derek's elbow as Eileen took Charles'.

"Yes, Ivy is quite a find. It's always been my favourite number, though I know I shouldn't be partial."

"Finding brilliance in excellence is never in poor taste, even you were capable of such, my dear. And without meaning to slight our star," Charles winked at her, and she bit her lip to keep from smiling back, "may I say that you are as radiant as always. Jerry never deserved you."

Eileen gave him a swat, but the compliment was clearly welcome, and even expected. "A flatterer, as always."

Ivy had moved without realizing it, slip of reality again, perhaps (though really, she had been careful to not drink), and her arm was somehow intertwined with Derek's, elbow resting against his side.

"It's been an age, why don't you refill my drink and we'll leave the young to enjoy their party?" Even though her drink was still full, and Derek didn't look, she peeked up, like he was enjoying much of anything.

"Ah, but you are fishing," Charles was game, even Ivy couldn't tell if knew what Eileen was doing. Or if it mattered. "You haven't aged a day since I met you..."

She and Derek were alone, and she took another sip. They hadn't spoken all night, she realized, not to each other despite often being in the same company. Hadn't spoken all week, in fact, not about anything other than the show, the details that consumed him, her.

"Shall we?"

She let him take her flute and set it down, then lead her away, surprised when they passed group after group, only time for nods and smiles until they were alone in a quiet corner, his hand leaving her back as he slumped against the wall. She missed the touch.

"I don't think I've said, but you were incredible tonight." He was smiling at her, tired but calm lazy syllables.

"We did good."

"You are a star" as he watched his own fingers trail up her arm, then back down again and she realized he was a little drunk by the erratic path. It was something she'd been carefully avoiding herself, somewhere between wanting to savour the moment and not make a fool of herself. Her mother had taught her that, couched in demeaning phrases but one of the few positives gleaned from all the bragging tales of her own adventures as Broadway's darling.

"Not yet," she caged, even though he didn't seem to be listening. "We haven't even opened yet, not officially."

There were butterflies in her stomach.

"You are," he insisted, voice low but he'd pushed himself upright and taken half a step closer, blocking her away from the crowd.

"Everyone has been very positive."

"You are perfect."

His hand was at her jaw and she didn't know what was happening. If she liked it. This wasn't them. This wasn't him.

Maybe it was.

She let him kiss her. Soft and gentle and probably causing murmurs.

She didn't know why. Stop. His breath was hot and full of scotch and maybe this was what it felt like to be his star. Maybe this heady feeling, like she was the sum total of his wishes, every thing that he needed, maybe this was what they all had felt, what Ka-

Stop.

She pulled back, not meeting his eyes, and jumbled an excuse about having promised to find Tom. And she fled.

* * *

She couldn't see the audience past the lights, though she could feel them in her bones, she could hear them and breathed for them and adjusted her timing to their approval like she could never anticipate in rehearsal. They bouyed her steps and lifted her high but they weren't more than a collective spirit. Until the end. When she came out for the final number and for a minute the only lights were a single spot behind her and the safety glows up the stairs. She was the one who was faceless, nameless, they were the ones in the light, blinded, a thousand tiny stars reflected in their eyes.

* * *

She'd left him in the corner but she couldn't shake the ghost of lips and fingers focused and heady as those faces, caught in the moment of then and now, there and here, living and memory. Theatre was about emotions, being in them, together, life lived more fully, more completely in the dark.

When the guests were leaving and the cast were growing louder, she found him by the bar, and drained his glass by way of greeting. She held onto it when she set it back down, pinky a scant inch from his hand as it splayed on the mahogany surface.

Her mother was in her head, suggesting she keep hold of her director, she'd be looking for another project soon, he'd already brought her far and he could do more, much more for her. Bombshell was only one show, it would be over for her in a year and nothing guaranteed her another role, another chance to craft a career not a role, and cement her name as more than a footnote. It was sordid and ugly, what was in her mother's voice, and so very much what she'd never wanted to be.

But she was nodding along. Bemused but everything she wanted and this wasn't like this unless it was but it wasn't because this felt like life. Messy and complicated and she couldn't see him as just her director, hadn't for a very long time. He didn't see her as just his star. Everyone knew that, she knew that with a certainty that scared her because she didn't know why she had slid through his fingers and didn't know why even when she was gone, he had stayed.

All of it was still true when the lights came back up. And right now it was dark.

"Take me home," she whispered.

And he did.

* * *

She hadn't thought she'd sleep, but she had. She'd thought her mind would race through lines and steps, second guesses as her muscles twitched through combinations burned in. They did. But they came in her dreams and she tackled and triumphed and flowed as they flowed together and when she woke up she raced to check her notes but it was with a brilliant clarity, lungs drawing deep and clean.

Her dressing room was a passthrough of hair and makeup assistants, and she talked to them all and felt lonely. Sam came by, of course. All her friends did, but even Tom was needed elsewhere and no one had time to sit for more than a minute. Not tonight.

Ironically, the isolation didn't cease until she really was alone, on sparse stage, bathed in her own oval of light.

* * *

There was a car waiting but they took a taxi, and the ride to her apartment was only uneasy for a block.

"You were in the spill light at the top of National Passtime."

"I couldn't hear when they hit their places over the audience – but I can work off Dennis, he's in the back."

And so it continued.

And maybe it was strange.

That it wasn't awkward, or that it was supposed to be.

But it felt right.

Maybe it was normal.

For him.

For her.

She got to build her own normal now. The beginnings of.

They had a list of notes writ up on Derek's phone before they reached her door, she typed in the last as he paid their fare. She handed it back, and that was when they ran out of things to say. Or maybe they'd run out of space to say it in. Because he stalled, framed in her doorway when she turned back, fuzzy in the backlight before he pulled himself at her so hard the door banged shut as then hit the bed.

His body was hard, mouth pressed against her jawline and thumb tugging up her dress in choreography she'd designed. Choreography that no longer fit. Even their bodies were suddenly mismatched, heavy, thoughtless and at odds when she tried to wrap her leg around his and couldn't. They'd always been about what they didn't say, and now it felt like they were trying not to communicate at all.

She fell limp, stroking gentle pressure in long sweeps over his back and head until he slowed, stilled.

Just like a woman, she mused. Gets exactly what she wants only she doesn't want it anymore.

His breathing was disproportionately loud in her ear, frozen weight hovering, slipping away. She tipped the balance with a little push, rolled after, grabbing his shirt to pull herself up as much as keep him put. The moment was strange, without knowing why, his arms wrapped around her and she pulled herself closer, cheek pressed into his chest to listen. If she'd listened to Charles, maybe she would hear, if she could hear, maybe she would have listened.

As soon as she realized it was their first hug she felt foolish, because his hands had found her zipper and he was waiting not...

She unbuttoned, he unzipped, she paused to slide her palms along his ribs for the rise and fall and he soothed a finger along the edge of her bra. She undid his belt as he unhooked her hooks and with tricky bits done their clothes slid down into neat piles.

Derek's reputation was rough and gruff but his hands weren't, tracing meandering lines from her shoulders through her hips up her spine into her hair. She giggled when he tickled her neck, trapping his fingers between her cheek and shoulder.

There was regret in his touch, all the fun they could have had if there wasn't so much else they had first. Stop. Breath. Pick something. It was dark but not dark enough. It wasn't like she was shooting for anonymity, they could never have that, but she wanted – stop she needed – stop. She'd had her first real taste of the Broadway stage tonight, and she was drunk too, just not on alcohol. The part was hers. Derek's work was all but done, the show didn't need him anymore. She didn't need him anymore.

She pressed her face into his neck.

A party was a party, one filled with power and influence and she'd never deluded herself into thinking they'd all wanted her attention. Many of them had. Most of them flattering, a dreamlike quality to the smalltalk and bright cultured laughter.

His touch settled in the small of her back, wandered off, went back to regroup.

Years in the ensemble schlepping to auditions had refined it, but it was a skill with which she had been born. It was in her blood, was her blood, the easy giggles and calm answers, deflecting praise onto others while still taking her due.

And in between the conversations, all a little alike, sometimes in between the smiles, so more authentic than others, her attention slipped and slipped again and she had to tear her eyes back from what she'd been looking for (the stage) and what she'd found.

Derek.

And even though they were naked and his fingers were now skimming her ass and he was semi-hard against her stomach this didn't feel sexual and that felt nice and stop thinking please because she felt as close to him as she ever had and tonight she was drunk on The Stage and she wanted to be closer. And if she thought she would remember that moment when Derek had flinched and she had taken his arm and Eileen had looked at her. And she would think about walking towards the door feeling kite-like and spotting Derek at the bar looking like-

She knew how he worked and wanted to know the rest. Maybe. If he wanted to tell her. About his father. His past. Why he wouldn't tell her the things he wouldn't tell her and if her reasons were the same ones she kept.

She wouldn't ask, he'd never answer.

Or maybe she'd never ask and he couldn't answer.

There was something else she did know, the place they shared where secrets were subtext and conversations that wouldn't happen, could happen.

She waited until his fingers had found their way home, and turned in the pause, one prepared movement to take his hand and tug down the covers, crawl in low and invite him to bed.

The darkness underneath in the dark was dark enough. Almost. Nothing but dim outlines, slight reflections off his eyes. In another life they could have stayed like that, face to face, whispering in touches and stroking secrets. In another life they could have known it all anyway, and found new things to say. In another life they could have been a lot of things. In this one she climbed on top, supporting herself just high enough to tease, not demand, as she rocked back and forth, sliding her tongue along his in languid sessions.

Maybe if they'd talked more, before. It was mostly him but there were so many times it had been her. Things she only told Sam. Or Tom. Because she'd never trusted him, not completely. Perhaps that was why he'd never fully trusted _her_. If he'd wanted to.

He was drawing on her front now, her sides, swinging around to her shoulder blades firmly enough to massage her tired muscles. She was dripping all over him, she could feel it when he cupped her breast, when he stopped and reversed just short of-

Shifting her weight she reached down with one hand, a firm touch from base to tip to gauge his arousal, then took him in hand to coax him along. Unrushed. From her angle she was reaching down, with the benefit of pressing her entire palm over the vein, and covering the head for a rub on every pull. He was hardening fast anyway, faster than she wanted, but they'd all been so busy. She had balance enough to toy with his hairline with her other hand, blindly navigating his face as if she could recreate him from thin air. Little huffs of breath filler her mouth and tickled her cheeks, and slight jumps in his hims quickened when she shortened her strokes and teased herself with his tip.

The blankets had been slipping and now fell when she hit her clit with a surprised yelp and her back arched, her mouth pulling away from his.

He laughed. Chuckled really, and that was surprising too, so much that she dropped onto his chest in a sudden and undignified way. Her eyes met his and he was gentle and affectionate, nothing she couldn't bear to see and she laughed too, letting him go with a final squeeze and letting him roll them over in the moonlight.

It was playful, random and silly and everywhere, little fights, mouths and hands and the twin of her leg. At some point his thrusts became more regular, smooth and deep with a shared rhythm, lips more urgent, she forgot to touch and clung instead but they were too lost to care and wordlessly searching for _more_.

* * *

It was applause. That first moment while her finale note was hanging in the air and then it was gone, swallowed and given back in thousands of hands. It was for her, for them, for everything they'd done and what they'd shared which could never be repeated.

Minutes later and the cast would be onstage, but only a sweep of the arm to remember the hundreds of people who should be there with them, who were unseen names but so very, very vital. Even she forgot, sometimes, but never during the applause. She was the show, but the show was not her.

* * *

An abrupt sense of loss and she realized his mouth was gone, lost and missing and his body was as tight under her fingers as her own and maybe this had been the moment she was waiting for all along but couldn't savour it because she wanted it as much as she thought he needed it and so she grabbed his hair a little too roughly to drag his mouth back to hers.

He came a few strokes after her and she rode the tail of her orgasm, a little heady from trying to breathe out of his mouth.

She couldn't ask him about his father because she couldn't tell him about her mother. But he wouldn't ask and maybe if she did... Yet she had read the tense vulnerability and he'd fucked her like she knew anyway. Maybe he thought she did. Maybe she knew enough.

Just enough time for them each to regroup and she pounced on him again, not even waiting to see what he'd done on his own before she had him pinned with one of her legs, tucking her hair behind her ear only to have him pull it back out, swinging in his face every time she leaned down to kiss him. Long drinks to short sips, he fondled her arm and she caressed his neck and cheek.

Warm, tired, familiar she kissed his cheek when she couldn't make her head move and his shoulder was just right for a pillow.

Arm still flung across his chest, listening to him breathe, she fell asleep.

* * *

_Ashley - Don't they just XP Derek and Peter will come face to face soon, and it should be... interesting eh?_

_Shanshii - It's Ivy! She's too awesome to only attract one guy! (Grrr show)_


End file.
